LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



©np^rig'^ '^tt.—,i-- 

-^Gt?- 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 















^>'^/--/ 



p^.^rf' 












THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH 



A STUDY OF THE DRINK-QUESTION 



AXEL GUSTAFSON 



%f' 



r 




GINN, HEATH, & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 

BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO 

1884 



HV soi,% 



,<^4 



^: . -Jied according to Act of Congress in the year 1884, X>y 

' ■. ' ' office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



DEDICATION. 



To my wife, who has fully shared with me 
the hard year's work of which this little book 
is the outcome, I dedicate it in gratitude and 
admiration for the genius and devoted labour, 
literary experience and skill, by which every 
page of it has benefited. 

London, May 29, 1884. 



PREFACE. 



In the time which I have been able to devote to this 
work — begun in April, 1883 — it has been my endeavour 
to formulate with thoroughness and impartiality as to 
evidence, and with conscientious care and clearness as 
to combination and deduction, all that is clearly known 
and proven regarding the grave problem of alcohol 
and human life. 

At the outset of this study, I entertained, besides a 
good deal of general ignorance on the subject and a 
mass of erroneous notions, the idea that there probably 
existed a safe dietetic dose of alcohol ; that such a 
limitation in the use of alcohol could be secured by 
suitable legislation, and thus the rank evil of drunken- 
ness be stayed ; and that a proper preliminary to this 
end would be an inquiry into what in the various 
countries had been deemed the most successful systems 
of licensing. 



vili PKEFACE. 

In researches which covered the examination of 
some three thousand works, dealing more or less 
directly with the alcohol question, I found excellent 
matter on special aspects of it, but no single work 
which attempted to treat of it in a comprehensive 
manner. The world-literature on alcohol is enormous, 
largely consisting of conflicting or dubious statements ; 
records of experiments made by different authorities 
reaching divergent conclusions ; cogent reasoning 
threaded by disintegrating fallacies ; and contradictory 
promulgations by one and the same author in various 
works, and not infrequently in different parts of the 
same work. 

Though the task of distinguishing, from among the 
traces along such a shore, between the flotsam and 
jetsam of the fluctuating tides of popular prejudices 
and notions, and the actual deposit marking the 
gradual progress of Truth's laborious but certain 
advance, might fitly engage far greater powers than 
mine, I have not felt deterred from making this earnest 
attempt. 

The general difficulty in selecting from super- 
abundance of material is well understood, but when the 
aim is to make a sound and suitable garment, three 
times the quantity of cloth needed does not make up 
for its being blemished and perforated in every yard. 
This has been one great obstacle in the selection and 



PREFACE. IX 

arrangement of quotations from the various authors, i.e., 
to winnow facts and significances from conflicting evi- 
dence and unsound arguments, to pick out and put into 
their proper relations the clearest, truest, most conse- 
quent dicta I could find, so as to form a whole and 
well-proportioned statement of the sum of experience 
and fact concerning this question. 

It will not be difficult to cite from authorities 
quoted by me, in one sense, other passages which may 
seem to modify or even perhaps contradict those I 
have selected. I can forestall criticism on such 
grounds only by saying that unconscious shuf&ing or 
deliberate equivocation on the part of an author cannot 
take from the intrinsic value of any truth which he 
has once seen, stated, and served, any more than could 
Galileo's recantation stop the sun. 

It cannot be useful to perpetuate a man's poorer 
and weaker words merely in order to destroy the due 
effect of his best utterances. And though individual 
inconsistencies have a certain value, it is not to them 
we must chiefly look for the solution of a great question 
of race import, but to the general tenor and character 
of the testimonies given by the cloud of witnesses who, 
whether from a mixture of motives or in single-minded- 
ness, have studied it; and it is from the points of 
consent where scientists, philosophers, and humani- 
tarians have met and agreed, that we may hope to 



X PEEFACE. 

begin a path toward the whole and definite truth about 
alcohol and man. 

With the avowed aim of dealing with the whole 
liquor question from every side and standpoint, it has 
not been possible within the limits of a work cheap 
enough to be in reach of the working classes, to deal 
fully with the drink question of all countries in 
Chapters X. and XIII., on " Social Eesults " and 
" What can be Done ? " And for many reasons Great 
Britain is almost exclusively considered in both these 
chapters, especially in the last. In each of the 
thirteen chapters I have tried to include only what 
belongs under its particular heading, and to the best 
of my ability, the contents of each chapter, and all the 
chapters in relation to each other, have been arranged 
and proportioned so as to bring the whole into good 
focus for the reader, at whatever point he may incline 
to take up the subject. 

In making quotations the following rules have 
been observed: — to give the title of the work, with 
place and date of publication ; to quote from the latest 
edition, and, if another work by the same author 
intervenes, to re-mention in full the preceding work if 
it is again referred to in the same chapter ; to translate 
the titles of foreign works into English, except in 
cases of classical or such modern titles as have not 
been included in the bibliography, or when by transla- 



PREFACE. XI 

tion the finding of the work cited would be made more 
dijBScult. Such quotations as have been rendered 
from other tongues into the English have been mostly 
translated by myself, because, when I tried to use 
translations already made, it frequently appeared that 
they were inaccurate, and therefore I thought that if 
fault should be found with the translated portions of 
my book, I would prefer being responsible for my own 
than others' mistakes in that line. 

The footnotes are not less valuable in their bearing 
on the drink question than the body of the text from 
which they are eliminated for easily seen reasons, 
generally to prevent break or tenuity in the argument. 

The appendix, with the exception of the abstract 
from the last report of the British Commissioners of 
Lunacy, deals exclusively with the rights and means 
of legal suppression of the liquor traffic. In order to 
enable the reader to find any passage by the table of 
contents as readily as by the general index, the text 
has been divided throughout the book into numbered 
paragraphs, accompanied by marginal notes, which are 
found in the same order in the table of contents ; and 
the readiest method of utilizing the bibliography has 
been explained in the brief preface to it. 

In the preparation of this work I have received 
cordial encouragement and the kindest assistance from 
many friends of temperance reform and from many not 



Xll PREFACE. 

identified with it, to each and all of whom my grateful 
thanks are due, and are here warmly rendered. Among 
the names of those to whom I am more especially 
indebted for help and sympathy indispensable to 
my undertaking are Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Dr. 
Norman Kerr, Dr. James Edmunds, Mr. Kobert Eae, 
Dr. Dawson Burns, Dr. K. Garnett, Mr. John P. Ander- 
son, Mr. G. W. Eccles, Mr. J. W. Leng, Mr. T. H. 
Evans, Mr. F. Sherlock, the Eev. Dr. de Colleville, the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Dean of Westminster, 
Canon Henry J. Ellison, Earl Shaftesbury, and Mr. 
J. W. Kolckmann, the German publisher, all of 
England; to Mr. L. 0. Smith of Stockholm, Dr. L. 
Lunier of Paris, Baron Lynden and the Kev. A. von 
Scheltema of Holland. 

While the book has been going through the press, 
I have used every power and facility at my command 
in the labour of revision and bringing up to date. 
This has involved a rearrangement and transposition 
of portions of the contents, and through the latter 
some slight verbal errors have crept in, and been 
discovered too late for correction in this edition. 

As to the title of the book, though it may at first 
appear exaggerated and sensational, I believe it to be 
a scientifically accurate description of the nature and 
career of alcohol in the life of man. " Life never is, it 
is always becoming ; it is not a state, but a flow," says 



PREFACE. xiii 

Professor J. Moleschott. And of death Dr. Hufeland 
says, "Generally speaking, death is not a change 
undergone in a moment, but a gradual passage from a 
condition of active to a condition of latent life." 

As there are many springs and foundations of life, so 
there are, doubtless, many foundations of death, deaths 
national, individual, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, 
as well as physical, but among them alcohol, if the 
true story of it is told by those who bear witness in 
this work, is pre-eminently a destroyer in every depart- 
ment of life, and therefore is truly the foundation of 
death. 



45, Upper Gioucestee Place, 

PoRTMAN Square, London, N.W. 

May 28, 1884. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

CHAPTEE I. 

DEINKINa AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 

PAGE 

§ 1. Difference between ancient and modem ideas of life, 
especially as regards drinking. § 2. Soma, and its charac- 
teristics. § 3. The ancient wine traditions — Myths about 
the vine as being the forbidden fruit — Traditions as to 
Noah and Satan planting the vine — Origin of the purple 
grape. § 4. Origin, history, and character of Bacchus- 
worship — The Bleusinian mysteries. §5. Proofs in historic 
records of the destroying power of drink — Assyria, Media, 
Persia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome — Drinking among the 
Sueves, ancient Scots, Jews, and Mohammedans ... 1 

CHAPTER 11. 

HISTORY OF THE DISCOVEKY OT DISTILLATION. 

§ 6. Causes of ignorance regarding the discovery of distillation 
— Nature and meaning of distillation. § 7. China and 
distillation — Arabia and distillation — Geber, Rhazes, Albu- 
cassis, Raimundus, Lullus, and Arnoldus Villa-Novus. 
§ 9. Reasons for the alchemists' belief in alcohol, and for 
the credulity of the masses. § 10. Various names for 
alcohol — Derivations of the word alcohol ... ... 25 

CHAPTER III. 

PEELIMINAEIES TO THE STUDY OE MODERN DRINKING. 

§ 11. Survey of the origin and progress of the sciences of 
chemistry and physiology — Aristotle's four.element theory 
— First establishment of the existence of chemical elements 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

— Lavoisier's discovery of the basis of oxidation — The 
foundation of scientific physiology laid in 1850 in the cell 
discovery. § 12. How alcohol became a prominent subject 
for chemical investigation — Discovery of ethyl, methyl, and 
amyl alcohols — The great number of groups, series, and 
varieties of alcohols — The elements of alcohol — The natural 
sources of alcohols — The meaning and processes of fer- 
mentation — The nature, action, and influence of ferments 
on life. § 13. Date of the first discovery of the real nature 
of alcoholic ferments — Generation of yeast fungi — The 
lethal nature of alcoholic fermentation — Saccharine fer- 
mentation in explanation of the traces of alcohol found in 
water, air, and earth — Alcohol in bread fermentation — 
Alcohol in living organisms, plants, and animals. § 14. The 
tendency of alcohol to decompose into elements. § 15. The 
various chemical and industrial uses for alcohols, § 16. 
Sources of the alcohols found in drinks. — Malting — Various 
alcoholic drinks ... ... ... ... ... 34 



CHAPTER IV. 

ADULTERATIONS. 

§ 17. Universality of liquor adulteration — Various poisons used 
in processes of adulteration. § 18. Reasons why wines 
are adulterated — Adulterations of Rhine wine. § 19. Port 
wine and sherry adulterations — The London Times on sherry 
adulteration. § 20. The Daily Telegraph on Spanish wine 
manufacture from raw spirits — The Daily News on the 
pending wine adulteration treaty with Spain — Wine-forti- 
fying with raw potato-spirit in London docks under 
Government supervision. § 21. Special ills and diseases 
directly traceable to the adulterating ingredients in wines. 
§ 22. Beer adulteration — Lupulit ... ... ... 46 



CHAPTER V. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS ; OR, EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON THE 
PHYSICAL ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS. 

§ 23. Difficulty in fixing the normal limit of human life- 
Opinions of Dr. L. Herman, Dr. J. R. Farre, and Prof. P. 
Plourens on this point — Man's responsibility in this matter 
— Ignorance the chief cause and alcohol the chief agent 
in shortening life. § 24. The wisdom manifested in the 
laws controlling and preserving organic life. § 25. Chemical 
elements of the human body — How it is maintained — Defi- 
nition of food — Division of foods — The processes of nutri- 



CONTENTS. XVll 

tion. § 26. The nature and dual mission of the blood — Its 
constituent parts and their mission — Water the paramount 
need of the system — Drs. W. B. Carpenter and Austin Flint 
on this point — Drs, Becquerel, Eodier, and Albin Koch on 
the predominance of water in the blood. § 27. Definition 
and division of poisons. § 28. The attitude of the medical 
profession concerning the use of alcohol — Is alcohol food ? 
— Dr. Baer's statement that alcohol contains no tissue- 
making compounds — Dr. Klein's testimony to its worthless- 
ness as a food — How the idea of its being a food came 
about. § 29. Alcohol tried by food-tests. § 30. Alcohol 
inimical to life — Dr. A. Carlysle on this point — A variety 
of conditions qualifying the effects of alcohol on man. 
§ 31. The hurtful effect of alcohol on nutrition twofold : 
viz. retardation of the processes of digestion and assimilation, 
and interference with the purely aqueous nature of the blood 
— Description of its effects on digestion — The rapidity of 
its entrance into the blood alone preserves the digestion 
from ruin — Drs. Todd and Bowman on this point— Dr. F. R. 
Lees' summary of the effects of alcohol on digestion — The 
effects of alcohol on the stomach itself — Dr. William Beau- 
mont's experiments on the stomach of the Canadian hunter, 
St. Martin — General summary of the effects of alcohol on 
digestion and the stomach. § 32. Preliminary comment on 
the effects of alcohol on the blood. § 33. Remarks on the 
food elements in alcoholic drinks — The Lancet on the 
nutritious elements in wines — Special consideration of malt 
Kquors — The food in alcoholic drinks not in the alcohol, but 
in the residuals — Drs. J. W. Beaumont and T. L. Brunton 
on the character of the fat in the system of malt-liquor 
drinkers — Why Dr. W. A. Hammond regards alcohol as a 
food — The meaning of alcoholic preservation of tissue. 
§ 34. Special consideration of the action of alcohol on the 
blood — Dr. C. H. Shulz on the nature of alcoholic degenera- 
tion of the blood — Dr. Dumas, the physiologists Booker and 
Virschow, Dr. Baer, Prof. Herman and Prof. Dogiel on the 
same — The effect of alcoholic degeneration of the blood on 
the nutrition of the tissues — Dr. Boker's experiments 
proving that alcohol, by retarding oxidation, tends to turn 
man's body into a preserved compost. § 35. How alcohol 
wastes and poisons the water of the system — The "drink- 
crave " a result of thirst— Dr. Flint on this point — The 
exactions made by alcohol upon the water of the system — 
The systemic need of water misunderstood as a need for 
alcohol. § 36. Alcoholic degeneration of the blood-vessels 
— Dr. James Edmunds on this point — Sir James Paget's 
warning to his disciples against surgical operations even 
on moderate drinkers. § 37. Theories as to what becomes 
of alcohol after it enters the blood current, by Baron Liebig, 
Drs. L'AUemand, Perrin, and Duroy, Prof. Bauer, and Drs. 

b 



XVlll CONTENTS. 



BoTichardat and Sandras. § 38. The difficulty of arriving 
at dej&nite conclusions on this point — A solution possibly to 
be found in the action of hydrolytic ferments — Dr. E. G. 
Fig^ on the presence of alcohol in the breath — Dr. James 
Hinton's Physiology for Practical Use on the same — Alcohol 
discovered in skin evaporations — Drs. E, G. Figg and T. L. 
Brunton on this point — Alcohol found in the urine — Drs. 
L'Allemand, Perrin, and Duroy, William Beaumont, John 
Percy, E. G. Figg, and Herr Kuyper on alcohol in the brain. 
§ 39. Effects of alcohol on the temperature of the body — 
Opinions on this point by Drs. Dumeril, Dumarquay, and 
Lecoint, Drs. Nasse, Prout, Davies, and Edward Smith, 
Prof. Binz and Drs. Dujardin, Beaumetz, and Audige — 
Practical evidences that alcohol reduces the temperature 
of the body — Plausible theories for reconciling the fall of 
bodily temperature with the Liebigian combustion theory. 
§ 40. Alcohol and the nervous system — Physiology of the 
nervous system — Dr. James Cantile on the character and 
functions of the nervous system — Parallel physiological 
effects of alcohol on the nervous and muscular tissues — 
Alcohol acts directly on the brain — Dr. Baer on this point 
— Possible solution of the riddle why alcohol when taken 
rapidly, intoxicates less and more slowly than when 
gradually taken, by sipping — The division of special nerve- 
affectants into stimulants and narcotics — Conflicting defini- 
tions of these terms by Dr. A. Billing, Sir J. Forbes, Drs. 
Headland, T. King Chambers, and T. L. Brunton — Defini- 
tion of stimulants and their division into invigorators and 
prostraters— Definition of narcotics, and their division into 
pseudo-stimulants and plain narcotics — Further explanation 
of the term pseudo-stimulants — Alcohol a narcotic poison — 
Dr. Thomas Trotter, in 1804, speaks of the medical con- 
troversy as to whether alcohol is a narcotic or stimulant — 
Prof. Christison, Drs. Figg, Anstie, and Edmunds on this 
point — The twofold narcotizing action of alcohol on the 
brain and nerves — Alcohol's interference with the powers 
of co-ordination and temporary abolition of sensation — Prof. 
John Piske on incipient alcoholic paralysis — Drs. Nicol, 
Mossop, and E. Smith on the tendency of alcohol to paralyze 
vision — The quality of the brain decides the quality of 
its communicating powers — Dr. J. Crichton Brown on this 
point — Alcohol degrades the quality of brain and nerves — 
Dr. Parkes on the paralyzing effect of alcohol on the power 
of transmitting thought — Dr. Howie on the same — Dr. 
J. J. Eidge's experiments with minute doses of alcohol, 
proving its paralyzing effects upon feeling, weight, and 
vision — Dr. Scougal, in confirmation of Dr. Ridge, adding 
that the sense of hearing is similarly affected by alcohol. 
§ 41. How the alcoholic nerve -degradation assists in pro- 
ducing the drink- crave — Dr. Anstie and Prof. Fiske on this 



CONTENTS. XIX 

PAGE 

point — general practical conclusions as to the narcotic re- 
sults from the use of alcohol, § 42. Dr. E. G. Figg on the 
injurious effects of alcohol when used as a mental stimulant 
— Sir Andrew Clark on the same — -Mr. A. Arthur Reade's 
summary from one hundred and thirty-two letters on this 
point — The Rev. Stopford A. Brooke's testimony on this 
point. § 43. Proofs and opinions for the statement that 
alcohol reduces the capacity for physical labour — Drs. 
Beddoes and Donders, Baron Leibig, and Drs, Parkes and 
Wollowicz on this point. § 44. General summary of the 
physiological results of the use of alcohol ... ... 57 



CHAPTER YI. 

PATHOLOGICAL RESULTS; OE, DISEASES CAUSED BY ALCOHOL. 

§ 45. Definitions of the terms disease and health — Dr. Huss, 
the originator of the term alcoholism and its division into 
acute and chronic. § 46. Meaning of the term chronic 
alcoholism — The general scope of alcoholism — Prof. Chris- 
tison on general diseases due to the use of alcohol — Dr. 
Murchison on continued fevers, and on functional diseases of 
the liver — Mr. Startin on skin diseases — Dr. Norman Kerr 
on alcohol as a cause of erysipelas — Sir William Temple, 
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Dr. Garrod on gout — Dr. Drys- 
dale on beer and gout — Testimony of Bromley Davenport, 
M.P. — Dr. B. W. Richardson's summary of the functional 
diseases and organic diseases from alcohol — Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing on alcoholic tremor — The Scientific American on 
general diseases resulting from beer. § 47. Dr. Huss on 
acute alcoholism — Prof. Kraft-Ebing on the analogy of 
acute alcoholic intoxication with insanity — Dr. Mason on 
alcoholic insanity — Mania.a-potu ; characteristics, ex- 
amples — Delirium tremens, its symptoms and general 
characteristics — Dr. Maudsley's descx^iption of delirium 
tremens — Prof. Kraft-Ebing on crimes committed under 
alcoholic hallucinations — Dr. Mason on alcoholic epilepti- 
form mania, on chronic alcoholic mania; on chronic 
alcoholic melancholia and its painful delusions — Conclusions 127 



CHAPTER YII. 

MORAL RESULTS. 

§ 48. Inquiry into the relations between drink and crime — 
Erroneous inferences of a writer in the Pall Mall Gazette 
on this point — Relations between sobriety and crime as 
contrasted with those between drink and crime — Examples 



XX CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

of unintentional alcoholic criminality — The kind of drink 
nsed and the temperament and the circumstances of the 
drinker largely determine the character of the manifesta- 
tions of drunkenness — The true field of direct alcoholic' 
criminal activity. § 49. General summary of physiological 
and mental results — Dr. Christoph. Wilhelm Huf eland on 
the difficulty of eradicating the drinking habit — Fable of 
the drunken man and sober pig — Physical and moral 
effects parallel — Notable exception to this rule — Charles 
Lamb's pathetic warning. § 50. The effect of alcoholism 
on the will — Difference between will and intention — 
Instance of the power of drink to annihilate the will — 
Moral insolvency of the drinker in the various relations 
and responsibilities of life : as son, citizen, neighbour, 
friend, husband, and father — Home of the drunken wife 
and mother as contrasted with the same home when the 
husband is the drunkard, and the wife and mother bears 
her bui-dens in patience and sobriety. § 51. The effect of 
alcohol in producing gradual weakening and final destruc- 
tion of character — Clever disguises assumed by the alcohol- 
ized will : in political life, for example — How alcoholism 
spoils the relations between master and working man and 
the general relations of life — Gradations produced by 
alcoholism : first moral unreliability, then turpitude and 
crime — The forger, the burglar, the murderer — The negative 
loss of will — The positive loss of will — Eev. Dr. W. E. 
Channing on the difference between poverty with and with- 
out drink — The foundation of human happiness, worth, and 
progress — Drink the deadly enemy of these — Drink tends, 
however unequally, slowly, insidiously, and with whatever 
delay of apparent signs, to undermine and destroy will, 
moral perception, conscience, affection, self-respect, and 
regard for others in whomsoever forms this evil habit ... 152 



CHAPTER YIII. 

HEREDITY; OR, THE CURSE ENTAILED ON DESCENDANTS BY ALCOHOL. 

§ 52. The laws of generation a protection to the race — The 
responsibility of parentage — Drs. Marc Lorin, Bourgeois, and 
Eigg on the general laws of heredity — The scope of hereditary 
effects. § 53. Various authorities on alcoholic heredity — 
Dr. E. Darwin, Eev. Edward Barry, Dr. Eosch, Dr. Morel, 
Dr. Figg, Dr. Lanceraux, Dr. Maudsley, Prof. Jaccoud, Dr. 
Baer, Dr. Gendson, and Dr. Kerr — Dr. Lewis D. Mason on 
hereditary drink-crave — Prof. Kraft -Ebing on hereditary 
alcoholic diseases and final extinction of family ... 171 



CONTENTS. XXI 

CHAPTER IX. 

THERAPEUTICS ; OE, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 

54 A sixteentli-centiiry opinion of alcoliol as a medicine. 
§ 55. Dr. Norman Kerr on tlie "Medical History of the 
Temperance Movement" — Dr. Higginbottom on the advan- 
tages of total abstinence as a prescription — The first anti- 
alcohol Medical Declaration of 1839, drawn up by Dr. 
Julius Jeflfreys — Second anti -alcohol Medical Declaration 
of 1847, by Mr. John Dunlop — Third anti-alcohol Medical 
Declaration of 1871, by Dr. E. A. Parkes— Establishment 
of the Quarterly Medical Temperance Journal, in 1869 — 
The British Medical Journal concerning alcohol as a 
medicine, Sept., 1871 — Dr. McMurtry's eloquent appeal to 
the medical profession, in the Medical Temperance Journal, 
Oct., 1871 — -Origin of the third British Medical Declaration 
— Opinions expressed by the Times, Lancet, and Pall Mall 
Gazette on the importance of this document — Wording of 
the third Medical Declaration — General effect produced by 
it on the public mind — Medical opinions evoked by its 
publication : Dr. Henry Monroe, Dr. J. J. Ritchie, and Dr. 
Higginbottom — Address to Mr. Robert Rae in acknowledg- 
ment of his great services in the cause of temperance 
reform, and of the important part taken by him in getting 
this declaration before the public. § 56. Dr. Charles 
Hare on the decline in the use of alcohol as a medicine 
since 1872. § 57. Former and present opinions on the use 
of alcohol as a medicine — Points regarding alcoholic pre- 
scriptions and their preparations — Principal therapeutic 
uses of alcohol : as a stimulant, as a narcotic, as an anti- 
spasmodic (Dr. Edmunds on this point), as an anti-septic, 
and as an anti-pyretic — Dr. S. C. Smith on the comparative 
worthlessness of anti-septics — The Rev. Dr. Hancock on 
water treatment in fevers — Dr. Billing on water treatment 
in typhus fever — Dr. Thomas Beaumont on the same — Dr. 
William Cayley on the merits of cold-bath treatment in 
typhoid fever in Germany and Prance — Dr. A. T. Myers 
on the great mortality from typhoid fever at St. George's 
Hospital (1877-1883) under alcoholic treatment — The 
British Medical Journal's (March 1, 1884) summary of the 
cold-bath treatment discussions, before the London Medical 
Society — The exclusion of alcohol from the Dosemetric 
therapeutics. § 58. Dr. Nicolls' report on the results of 
sixteen years' non-alcoholic treatment of diseases in the 
Longford Poor Law Union— Origin, foundation, and work 
of the London Temperance Hospital — Dr. Edmunds' state- 
ment, including table, regarding the character of the non- 
alcoholic treatment of disease in this hospital. § 59. The 



XXll CONTENTS. 



effects of fclie use of alcohol on mothers and their offspring 
— Dr. Thomas Trotter and Sir Anthony Carlisle on this 
point — Drs. Rosch and Grindrod on the evils of the use of 
alcohol during lactation — Drs. E. G. Eigg and E. Smith on ■ 
the hurtful effects of the use of alcohol during pregnancy 
and lactation — Dr. Edmunds on the diet of nursing mothers, 
and on the special effects of beer-drinking during lactation 
Dr. Harrison Branthwaite on infant mortality from the use 
of ale and stout during lactation — Dr. J. C. Reid's warning 
against alcoholic prescription ... ... ... 181 



CHAPTER X. 

SOCIAL RESULTS; OR, THE GENERAL EFFECTS ON SOCIETY 
CAUSED BY ALCOHOL. 

§ 60. General value of statistics. § 61. Inconsistency of the 
attitude of Parliament toward the drink-question. § 62. 
Yarious weighty opinions on the destructive effects of 
alcohol upon society : Buffon, the Rev. H. W. Beecher, the 
Times, Dr. Germain Marty, Mr. W. E. Gladstone — Opinions of 
the judges of the United Kingdom : Mr. M. O' Shauglinessy, 
Mr. Justice Grove, Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, Baron Dowse, 
Mr. Raffles (Stipendiary Magistrate of Liverpool), Lord 
Chief Justice Coleridge, Mr. Justice Denman, Baron 
Huddleston, and Mr. Justice Hawkins. § 63. Mr. William 
Hoyle's drink statistics — The Rev. Dawson Bums on the 
annual expenditure in drink as compared with other 
expenditure in Great Britain — Mr. Stephen Bourne on 
the same from an opposite point of view — Mr. Hoyle's 
"Drink Traffic and its Evils" — Mr. Hoyle's table "show- 
ing the Population, Total Cost and Average Cost per Head 
of Intoxicating Liquors in the United Kingdom for various 
years from 1820 to 1870, and for each subsequent year up 
to 1882" — Statements by Sir William Collins and ex- 
. Bailie Lewis to the Scotch Temperance Convention, March 
3, 1884, regarding the condition of affairs in Glasgow, 
due to drink — The relations between drink and poverty — 
Dr. Dawson Burns on drinking as the mainspring of 
pauperism. § 64. Parliamentary report in 1834, on in- 
temperance — Reports of Drs. Parkes and Sanderson, state- 
ment by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, address by Lord Derby, by Mr. 
Edward Jones of the Toxteth Board of Guardians, and by 
the Rev. John Kirk, on the relations between drink and 
poverty — Testimony of Mr. William Hoyle, Miss Mary 
Bayley, Mr. George R. Sims, and Mr. Caine, M.P., on this 
point — Canon Farrar's sermon on drink, in Westminster 
Abbey, Nov. 19, 1883 — George R. Sims on Horrible London 



CONTENTS. XXIU 



— The "Dustman's " speech in Exeter Hall, Nov. 21, 1883 
— Condition of the children of drunkards — Comparison 
between the revenue returns from drink in prosperous and 
unprosperous years — Address by Cardinal Manning — Im- 
portant evidence of Charles Saunders before the parlia- 
mentary committee on drink, in 1834 — Eeport of the special 
sanitary commissioner of the Lancet, in 1872 — Practical 
conclusions — The BaiVy Telegraph (Oct. 25, 1883) on Why 
should London wait ? — The Bitter cry of Outcast London. 
§ 65. Mortality from drink — Statement by Coroner Wakley 
in 1839 — Testimony of Dr. Norman Kerr — Eeport of the 
Harveian Society — Sir Wm. Gull on alcoholic infanticide — 
Mortality among liquor-dealers ; statements on this point by 
Dr. Kerr and Mr. David Lewis — Notice concerning publicans, 
issued by the General Assurance Office in 1881 — Statement 
of Dr. Edmunds — Eelative longevity of drinkers and 
abstainers, as furnished by the United Kingdom Temper- 
ance and General Provident Institution for Mutual Life 
Insurance — Statement of Mr. W. B. Eobinson, chief con- 
structor E.N., concerning the "value of life being increased 
by taking no intoxicating drinks." § QQ. Schlegel on 
drink as a cause of insanity and suicide — Dr. Ganghofner's 
estimate of alcoholic insanity in America, England, and 
Holland — Dr. Lockhart Eobertson's computation for 
England and Germany — House of Commons report for from 
1865 to 1875 — Mr. Hoyle on alcoholic insanity in England 
and Wales — Last report of the commissioners of lunacy — 
Dr. Shepherd's statement — Statements by Earl Shaftesbury 
and Dr. Gilchrist before the Lunacy Commission of 1877 — 
Mr. Hoyle on the increase of alcoholic lunacy in England 
and Wales— Dr. T. S. Cleriston and W. J. Corbet, M.P., on 
the same — Sanger on alcohol as a cause of prostitution — • 
Summary of the report on drink laid before the Belgian 
Chambers by Frere-Orban in 1868. § 67. Dr. Edward 
Young on the annual drink bill of the United States — Mr. 
Powell, of New York, on the liquor industry of the United 
States — The New York Temperance Advocate on the liquor 
revenue of the United States (1863-1882) — London Even- 
ing Standard on liquor consumption in the United States — 
The Neiv York Herald on the number of liquor- shops in 
New York city, in 1883 — Dr. Howard Crosby on this point 
— The condition of Birmingham in this respect ; evidence 
of Mr. J. Chamberlain, M.P., before the Lords' Committee 
on Intemperance in 1879 — The Pall Mall Gazette on the 
number of public-houses in proportion to the population of 
the various states of the union — Drs. Lee, Wilkins, and 
Mason on alcoholic insanity in the United States — Dr. 
Mann, of New York, on general alcoholic insanity — Maxime 
du Camp on the drink petrolomania in Paris during the 
siege — Dr. Baer on the deterioration in the French army 



XXIV CONTENTS. 



caused by drink — Dr. E, Lanceranx on alcoholism and 
decrease in population— Dr. Baer on alcohol and insanity 
in Prussia — Dr. Finkelburg of the Russian Health Com- 
mission on alcohol, insanity, and crime in Russia ... ■ 226 



CHAPTER XL 

OEIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 

}. Drs. Baer and E. G, Figg on the existence of races (some 
of them only recently extinct) who knew nothing of in- 
toxicants — Origin of the mischief. § 69. Likeness between 
the development of the race and the individual — The in- 
dividual searches for happiness — The race searches for 
happiness — Both mistake the ignis fatuus for the Star — 
First gropings towards knowledge by means of the senses 
— Alcohol believed to be a great agent for producing happi- 
ness — Natural appetites and passions changed into un- 
natural lusts by the abnormal development of the senses 
• — Spiritual and mental progress under these conditions — 
The two great factions into which this development has 
divided mankind ; the graspers who succeed, the graspers 
who fail — Alcohol a paramount agent in restricting man 
to life in the world of the senses — The Rev. Dr. Crane on 
the Arts of Intoxication — True exaltation counterfeited by 
the fleeting excitement of alcohol — Self-deception has 
made man miss happiness all round ; in religion, in science 
— Illustration of this — What happiness is, and how it can 
be found. § 70. Supplementary causes explaining the 
power alcohol has obtained over mankind — The effect of 
high living and smoking in vitiating taste, smell, and 
digestion, and thereby provoking a desire for strong drink 
— The force of example because of the sympathetic unity 
of the race — Plutarch on the force of association — Thomas 
Tryon on the force of example upon children — T. Campbell 
on the influence and effects of habitual intercourse in 
daily life — The force of habit because of natural laws : 
conscious and openly acknowledged effects — Mr. Spurgeon 
on the responsibility of parents in the matter of drink — 
We never see our own personal danger — Dr. Wm. Ellery 
Channing on the responsibility of the wealthy classes toward 
the poor in the question of abstinence — The force of 
hereditary habit — Soren Kirkegaard on the force of evil 
habit — The force of habit become instinct — Difficulty for 
the race as for the individual to break the chains of habit 
— Difficulty of adjusting our social relations in harmony with 
our personal convictions — The great responsibility resting 
with the throne in this respect — The Canterbury Convoca- 



CONTENTS. XXV 

PAGE 

tions (1883) on the use of wine in the Lord's Sapper — Mr. 
John Sebright on instinct — Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. 
Shirley Hibberd on the same — Prof. J. J. Eomanes on the 
force of habit-formed instinct becoming nature in a 
depraved sense. § 71. History waiting to say something 
new ... ••• ••• ••• ••• ... 283 



CHAPTER XII. 

SPECIOUS EEASONINGS CONCEENING THE USE OP ALCOHOL. 

§ 72. Similarity of process in body-poisoning and mind-poison- 
ing — The danger of half-truths — The two conditions in 
which man will admit that evil is evil — Hyper-sensitive 
individuality a great obstacle in the way of personal 
reform — The necessity of convincing the masses, the self- 
deceived as well as the honest searchers and the ignorant 
— The great need of general and positive knowledge on 
the subject. § 73. The fallacy of the boast that the virility 
of the English nation proves the comparative harmlessness 
of drink — Brief epitome of England's drink history — 
Bergenroth on the attitude of the English court concerning 
water-drinking in 1498 — Citation from Camden's Annals, 
1581 — Dr. William Bullein, in speaking of the evils of drink 
in 1595, makes no mention of distilled liquors — Citation 
from the Compleat Gentleman (1622) ; from Tryon's Way 
to Health, Long Life, and Happiness (1683) — Hard diinking 
not common in England until the seventeenth century — 
Citation from De Foe's Poor Man's Plea ; from Sir John 
Harrington's Nugce Antiquce; from Bishop Benson in 
Lecky's History of England (1878) — The Eev. Dr. Dawson 
Burns on the specious arguments used to prove that the 
commission of crime in so-called sober countries, justifies 
the assumption that drink is not at the bottom of most of 
the crime committed in Great Britain. § 74. Habitual 
drunkenness universally condemned — Moderate drinking 
the nucleus of dispute — No fixed standard of moderation 
possible — Dr. John Cheyne on this point — Fourteen glasses 
of wine daily, the moderation limit of a German temper- 
ance society in the sixteenth century — In our day modera- 
tion entirely optional — The elasticity of the term as seen 
in its usual definitions — The Lancet on publicans, and 
specious reasoning about moderation — The practical worth- 
lessness of the plea of moderation — Dr. Grindrod (Bacchus, 
1839) on moderate drinking as the preparatory stage of 
drunkenness — Dr. J. Baxter on moderate drinking — Drs. 
Copland, Garnett, James Johnson, Macrorie, Gordon, Sewall, 
Sir Henry Thompson, Sir William Gull, and Dr. W. B. 



XXVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Carpenter on the same — Tlie late Samuel Bowly on 
moderation versus total abstinence — A valuable suggestion 
by Mr, C. Kegan Paul — The deceptive character of the 
relief attributed to the moderate use of alcohol in cases of 
exhaustion from labour. § 76. Dr. R. B. Grindrod on the 
effects produced by moderate drinking upon temper and 
judgment — Dr. Baer on the effects produced on mental 
processes by alcohol — Dr. Hewitt on the character of 
moderate drinking among the French — The moral respon- 
sibility of the moderate drinker — The Eev. Stopford A. 
Brooke on this point — The Rev. James Smith in refuta- 
tion of the argument that moderation is better than absti- 
nence — C. Kegan Paul on the same point — Charles Lamb's 
warning appeal to young men. § 77. Dr. Howard Crosby's 
objections to the temperance pledge, and Mr. Wendell 
Phillips' reply. § 78. The fallacy of positive deductions 
in arguing the general from the exceptional — Examples — 
The meaning of the plea for longevity ... ... 305 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WHAT CAN 13E DONE ? 

79. Why past temperance efforts failed — Their character — 
Early moderation societies — Special reasons for their 
failure — Characteristics of the modem temperance move- 
ment the basis for hope of permanent reform — Initiation 
of the present popular temperance movement ; how it pro- 
gressed, collapsed, and revived. § 80. Summary of the 
character and extent of the powers and obligations of the 
British Government in internal reforms — The sovereign 
power and hence responsibility of the masses — The people 
responsible for the morality of Parliament and Government, 
not the Government for that of the people. § 81. Dangers 
attending political agitation on moral issues — The para, 
mount importance of sobriety for the protection of national 
independence — The battle of Hastings lost through drink 
— The Echo on drunkenness in the army — Lord Wolseley 
on the army and drink — Cardinal Manning on the same — 
Major-General Sir Evelyn Wood in confirmation of Cardinal 
Manning's statement. § 82. Mischiefs that have resulted 
from prematurely driving the liquor-dealers into self- 
defence unions, by indiscriminate political agitation for 
prohibition — The earliest moment when prohibition can 
become a practical and beneficent fact — The hopeful omen 
of the Queen's speech opening Parliament, 1884. § 83. 
Various preparatory measures for general prohibition — 
Local option : Sir Wilfrid Lawson's scheme — The local 



CONTENTS. XXVll 

option resolution of the great temperance meeting in Edin- 
burgh, March 3, 1884 — The attitude of the Government 
toward it — The question of compensation to the publicans 
— The publican's side of the question — The public's side of 
the question — A hint to licensed victuallers how to pre- 
pare themselves and their houses for the inevitable — 
Scheme for reconciling the conflicting interests involved in 
prohibition with due regard to health, morality, and 
revenue. § 84. The paramount duty of the Government 
regarding exportation of liquor, and particularly in case of 
internal prohibition — Mr. Eobert Eae on this point — Cete- 
wayo's remonstrances with England — The liquor treaties 
with Siam and Madagascar in 1883. § 85. National slavery 
under the liquor revenue — Brief summary of the history of 
licensing — The Grocers' Licence Act ; the Saturday Review, 
the Practitioner, the Spectator, the Alliance News, and the 
Lancet on the various evil results of this Act — The attitude 
of the Church of England Temperance Society toward it ; 
Canon Leigh's advice to the Women's Union to boycott liquor- 
selling grocers — The Temperance Record on the increasing 
intemperance among women as being largely due to the 
Grocers' Licence Act — Mr. George E. Sims on the social 
effects of the grocers' licences — The most pressing reason 
for the repeal of the grocers' licences. § 86. Various lesser 
legislative measures ; restriction of the power of renewing 
licences ; low windows compulsory for public-houses ; pro- 
hibition of the employment of women as bar-tenders — • 
Public conveyances should neither bear the names of, nor 
have their stations at, public-houses — Canon Ellison on 
juvenile intemperance in Liverpool and Manchester — In- 
stances of juvenile intemperance cited by the Daily News, 
December, 1883 ; by the Glohe — Imprisonment a proper 
penalty for the crime of selling or giving drink to children 
— The Lancet's opinion on this point — Early habits and 
home example largely responsible for the prevalence of 
this vice among adults. § 87. Sir William Armstrong on 
prohibition of the propagation of vice and poverty. § 88. 
Dr. Norman Kerr and the Dalrymple Home — Dr. Thomas 
Hawksley on the cure of habitual drunkards — The Lam- 
beth Board of Guardians on the necessity of reform in the 
Habitual Drunkards' Act. § 89. The need of international 
relations in view of thorough drink legislation — The need 
of international agreement for the general suppression of 
liquor trafiic on the seas. § 90. Need for the establish- 
ment of a permanent national commission of inquiry into 
the whole question of alcohol and man. § 91. The origin 
and establishment of temperance coffee-taverns in England 
— Their character and usefulness — The prominent part 
taken by Mrs. George Bayly in this movement — Eeasons 
for the poor results of the coffee-taverns in London — The 



XXVUl CONTENTS. 

Daily Chronicle on the mismanagement of these establish- 
ments — Sugo^estion for merging the coffee-tavern project 
into that of the steam-kitchen — first efforts and progress of 
the steam-kitchen movement on the Continent — Mrs. Lina 
Morgenstern's steam-kitchen in Berlin — Mr. L. 0. Smith's 
steam-kitchen in Stockholm, and his own account of their 
importance and work. § 92. Pure water the greatest 
essential for life and health — Mr. Thomas Tryon on water, 
1697 — Dr. George Cheyne on the same, 1725 — Water 
ordinance in Antwerp — The agitation for pure water supply- 
in London during the last twenty-five years — A writer in 
the Pall Mall Gazette on the present quality of the water 
supply in London — The Neio York Medical Record on water 
for infants — Dr. James Wilson on the therapeutic proper- 
ties of water — The iancet on water-drinking — Dr. Ploim's 
bibliography on water in Dr. Ziemssen's Handboolc of General 
Therapeutics — Interesting testimony of Dr. Morel to the 
recuperative power of natural functions when perversions 
of them are desisted from. § 93, Importance of instruct- 
ing children to understand their own bodies, especially in 
regard to the harm alcohol does to them — Testimony of the 
Lord Bishop of Exeter ; of the Rev. Dr. Adam son, of the 
Edinburgh School Board — Why the popular education 
system is poor — Leon Dounat's estimates of the relative 
amounts expended on education and war by the European 
powers — Ex-Bailie Lewis on the inadequacy of the Com- 
pulsory Education Act, and of sanitary agencies to uproot 
or essentially diminish the vice and misery produced by 
the public-house — Dr. Channing's definition of education; 
■ his views on the true use of wealth — Temperance teachings 
in the schools of Massachusetts, 1872 — Labours of the 
National Temperance League for the spread of temperance 
education — Cardinal Manning's order for the establishment 
of branches of the Catholic Total Abstinence League in 
every Catholic school in the Archdiocese of Westminster — 
Efforts to establish temperance education in German 
schools, and in the schools of Canada, Australia, and the 
United States — The school savings-bank system in Sweden 
— Poverty the worst enemy of popular education, and 
drink the chief cause of poverty — Statement by Mr. E. N. 
Buxton, chairman of the London school board — Statement 
by the Right Hon. Mr. Mundella on drink in its bearing 
upon education — Poverty will never yield until drink is 
removed — Mr. Gladstone on poverty, House of Commons, 
1843 — Lord Salisbury's suggestions for the alleviation of 
poverty, National Review, November, 1883 — Mr. Cham- 
berlain on the same topic. Fortnightly Review, December, 
1883 — Dangers from supplanting moral impetus by mere 
political agitation — Earl Shaftesbury on the mischief of 
State aid, Nineteenth Century, December, 1883 — Earl 



CONTENTS. XXIX 



Shaftesbury's statement that " it is impossible, absolutely 
impossible, to do anything to permanently or considerably 
relieve poverty until we have got rid of the curse of drink" 
— A working man's letter suggesting the establishment of 
a Government Labour Registry Office, Daily News, Decem- 
ber, 1883 — Sober working men's relief banks — Mr. Francis 
Peek on the responsibility of the rich in the question of 
poverty and drink — Mr. Henry George's scheme of land 
nationalization as a cure for poverty — Neither time, con- 
ditions, nor people prepared for it — The foundation of any 
individual or national regeneration must be laid in temper- 
ance — Suggestions as to what might be expected supposing 
land nationalization should be accomplished without tern- 
perance reform — Evening Standard's account of the scenes 
on Brighton beach after the wreck of the Simla — Similar 
scenes following the rescue of the cargo of the wrecked 
Royal Adelaide — Mr. Joseph Cowen on the paramount im- 
portance of sobriety. § 94. Dr. Channing on the reform- 
ing power of innocent pleasures and amusements — The 
power and province of the stage in this direction — The 
moral and refining influence of the Princess's Theatre under 
the management of Mr. Wilson Barrett — The late Duke 
of Albany on the duty of the rich in providing pleasure for 
the poor — The Newca<itle Chronicle on the provision of 
amusements as a check on drink and crime. § 95. The 
great responsibility resting upon magisti'ates, physicians, 
and the clergy in regard to the drink evil — The responsi- 
bility of the Church in regard to the drink evil — Origin 
and growth of the Church of England ten) perance move- 
ment — Appeal to the Lords' Committee of 1880 by Canon 
Henry J. Ellison, for effective legislation in favour of tem- 
perance — Archbishop Benson's position regarding temper- 
ance reform — Purposes and mission of the Church of Eng- 
land Temperance Society — The Bishop of Carlisle on the 
success of the labours of this society, St. James' Hall, 
November 20, 1883 — Canon Basil Wilberforce in denuncia- 
tion of Church proprietorship in public-houses — Practical 
expression by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners of their 
interest in the promotion of temperance and education, 
Temperance Record, November 8, 1883 — The question of the 
use of wine in the Lord's Supper — Decision of the Upper 
House in the Convocations of Canterbury, July, 1883 — 
Modern discoveries, as to the nature and effects of alcohol, 
leave the conscientious clergyman no alternative — The 
Rev. Moses Stewart on total abstinence as a qualification 
for Church membership — The Rev. B. Parsons on the con- 
stant risks incurred by attendance at the Lord's Supper — 
Mr. E. C. Delevan on the use of wine in the Communion — 
Archdeacon Jeffreys, of Bombay, on the same — The Lord 
Bishop of Exeter and Canon Wilberforce on the same; 



XXX CONTENTS. 



various important considerations involved in this question. 
§ 96. Dr. Channing on drink customs — The origin and age 
of the drink customs — Strutt on the same — The Queen's 
opposition to the social bondage of the drink customs ; her 
insight into the national dangers from drink, and her sym- 
pathy with temperance reform — The interest manifested 
by the Prince of Wales in the temperance reform — The 
interest shown by the late Duke of Albany in the condition 
of the poor and in temperance reform — The practical in- 
auguration of drinking toasts in water, by the Metropolitan 
Board of Works, 1883 — Toasts drunk in unf ermented wines 
at the inauguration luncheon of the Society for the Study 
and Cure of Inebriety, April 25, 1884 — Prince Puckler on 
the absurdities of the drink customs — The Rev. B. Parsons 
on the same ; a working man on the same— The Rev. James 
Smith on the same — Success of Mr. Samuel Morley, 
M.P., and of Earls Shaftesbury and Stanhope, in securing 
the abolition of the custom of the payment of wages at 
public-houses — The Rev. Wm. Moister on the variety and 
prevalence of social drinking habits — -Dr. J. G. Holland on 
the duty of society in this respect. § 97. Dr. Chapin on 
the responsibility of wealth for the prevalence of the drink 
evil — Lord Claud Hamilton's statement (St. James' Hall, 
May 19, 1870) concerning the prohibition estate in Tyrone 
— Evidence of Mr. T. W. Russell on the prohibition estate 
of Bessbrook ; Mr. J. G. Richardson's evidence on the same 
— Statement of Mr. A. E. Eccles concerning the prohibition 
village of White Coppice — The Saltaire prohibition estate 
— The prohibition real estate companies of Mr. John 
Roberts in Liverpool, and the Artisans and Labourers' 
General Dwelling Company in London — Pall Mall Gazette 
on this point — Mr. Hepworth Dixon's description of the 
results of the prohibition in St. Johnsbury, Vermont — 
Success of prohibition in the town of Pullman, U.S.A. 
§ 98. Temperance measures which might be adopted by 
the wealthy railway companies of Great Britain — Dr. J. G. 
Holland on " Rum and Railroads " — The lead taken by 
engineer George Stephenson — Action by the West Lancashire 
Railway Company in this direction — Growing success of 
the total abstinence movement on the Midland line, and in 
the Railway Union at large — Oatmeal drink supplied by 
the Great Eastern Railway Company to their employes — 
The Toronto Glohe, February 6, 1884, on "Drinking and 
Positions of Trust " — Mr. W. J. Spicer's circular to the 
Grand Trunk Railway — Mr. Bronson Howard's account of 
the origin of temperance reform on the lakes and the ocean. 
§ 99. Suggestions made by Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., 
that an Abstainer's Union should be attached to every 
commercial concern — Action of the aristocracy of England 
in favour of the Blue Ribbon movement and other temper- 



CONTENTS. XXXI 



ance measures — The significance of the Blue Eibbon move- 
ment — Mr. Gladstone on the significance of the Blue Ribbon 
movement. § 100. The plan and organization of the Tem- 
perance Federation of Great Britain, 1883. § 101. The 
foundation of all temperance reform lies in individual 
character and worth — The hope of temperance reform, 
like the hope of all other reforms, is vested in love, labour, 
hmnility, and unselfishness ... ... ... ... 331 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

A STUDY OF THE DEINK QUESTION. 

CHAPTER I. 

DEINKING AMONa THE ANCIENTS. 

§ 1. Whether we look at tlie individual, family, com- 
munity, nation, tribe, or race of man, human advancement 
seems always to liave been surest and most tborougb when 
the lessons of the past have been allowed to bear fruit in 
the present. The Drink Question is a problem co-extensive 
with almost the whole preserved history of mankind ; and 
although opinions may be divided as to the effects of drink 
in our day, that the past must furnish valuable suggestions 
on this point will not be disputed, and therefore some 
knowledge of the past history of drink is a necessary 
preparation for the study of this question in the present. 

In trying to form some notion of the drinking habits 
of the ancients, it is necessary to keep certain facts in 
mind, facts pertaining to their time and status, and almost 
wholly absent from ours. 

The ancient mind in its general tendency towards Difference 
mysticism and away from materialism — the reverse of the ^fg'^^^nd*'^' 
mind of to-day — revered all unexplained phenomena, wor- modern ide- 
shipped all those numberless forces and force manifesta- cLuy'as^^" 
tions which it could not master or account for, and stood in regards 
awe before the, to them, — yes even to us, — essentially veiled ^^^ ^°^" 
principle of intoxication. This awe of the phenomena of 
intoxication is the one characteristic of ancient nature- 

B 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

worship whicli perhaps better than any other illustrates 
the truth that external nature — being always essentially 
the same, and impressing man in each age according to the 
intelligence of that age in essentially the same manner 
— infused into the religions of the past a striking similarity. 

Distillation was unknown among the ancients (ex- 
cepting possibly the Chinese), and therefore they could 
know nothing of our distilled liquors, brandy, whisky, 
gin, rum, liqueurs, etc. Another thing to remember is 
that though they had fermented drinks, such as soma, and 
grape, palm, fig, pomegranate, apricot, and grain wines, 
they held, in their childlike veneration of the unknown, 
a superstitious reverence for fermentation, while their very 
ignorance of its causes and processes made it exceedingly 
difficult for them to preserve their fermented drinks from 
turning into vinegar. 

But as the ancients, ignorant of distillation, could not, 
as is now the practice, fortify their wines with distilled 
spirits, their most common drinks must have been unfer- 
mented juices, either pressed direct from the fresh fruit, 
or from juices boiled down and kept in skins or earthen pots 
and jars, deposited for coolness in the ground or under 
water ; or extracted from dried grapes — raisins soaked in 
water, etc. 

Their fermented drinks likewise were usually boiled 
down and kept as the unfermented. As to the strength 
of their fermented drinks, it seems probable that then, as 
now, the average was below 15 per cent, of alcohol, but 
here it must be remembered that the ancients rarely drank 
fermented wines undiluted, and when they did so, were 
in the habit of drinking copiously also of pure water ; and 
,also that the art of adulteration, now perfected almost 
beyond the possibility of detection, was then very little 
understood or practised ; for certainly the aromatizing with 
spices, and sharpening with tar and other substances, as 
practised by the ancients, cannot be held comparable, for 
their intoxicating or poisonous effects, with our modern 
scientific and most unscrupulous mysteries of drink 
concoctions. 

Again, the drinking of fermented liquors was largely 
a religious rite with the ancients ; their banquets were even 
opened with propitiatory or grateful libations to the deities, 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. S 

while we use our mimberless and highly alcoholized drinks 
as social and physical stimulants and anodynes. 

In a word, the fermented drinks of the ancients were 
but little adulterated, almost invariably diluted, and asso- 
ciated with a reverential, if undeveloped and mystic worship. 
While ive use both fermented and spirituous liquors, highly 
adulterated, and " fortified," and drink not to God, or 
with religious aspiration, bat to please the palate, excite 
the senses and passions, kill time, forget sorrows, deaden 
anxiety, drown conscience, and gain brute courage for 
infamy and crime. 

§ 2. The vai'ious ancient religions have come with 
apparent spontaneity to remarkably similar conclusions 
as to the origin and history of their intoxicants. 

For instance, somewhere in the great records of the 
East Indians, it is related that the plant from which the soma 
draught was prepared, was brought down from heaven by 
a falcon ; and a legend among their antipodes, the Huron 
Indians of North America, also ascribes the origin of their 
intoxicant — the tobacco plant — to heavenly intervention. 

In the Bjig-Yedas {rig, verb, to praise, and veda, 
knowledge) the Brahminic Bible and — according to our 
best Yedic scholars. Professors Miiller and Von Roth — 
the greatest and truest of extant records * of our East 
Indian progenitors, we find that they had two kinds of 
intoxicating drinks, soma and sura. 

Soma (the name of the moon, and also of the king of Important 
plants) is at present a plant unknown. From the juice drink^history 
of it, the Yedic people prepared an intoxicating drink. ofourVedic 

It has been asserted by some that an intoxicating drink 
that has been for a long time back prepared by the Indians 
from the juice of Sarcostemma acidum, is the same as the 
ancient soma ; but this can scarcely be so, as soma was 
a pleasantly sweet drink, whereas the Sarcostemma product 
is a disagreeably bitter one, and to Europeans quite 
intolerable. 

* It is known witli certainty that the Eig-Vedas have remained 
just as they now stand in John Muir's Original Sanscrit Texts, 
for nearly three thousand years. But before their collection, which 
was probably made yet a thousand years earlier, these hymns had 
been only orally transmitted, the oldest evidently for some fifteen 
hundred or two thousand 



4 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Tlien again, Sarcostemma does not grow in tlie Seven 
River Land, the home of the Yedic peoples. 

Sura, probably the wine of rice, was not common 

among them, not used, at the sacrifices, aod its nse, never 

in high favour, is often condemned in the Yedas. 

The real Soma was worshipped as containing the vivifying prin- 

character of q[jj,\q gf ^hc nnivcrsc. It was therefore an essential to the 

the Indira- gods, bnt as it grew on the earth the gods had to descend 

worship. thither to receive it. And they were supposed to do this 

at the daily sacrifices which took place at sunrise, noon, 

and sunset. 

In some recent writings on the drink question it has 
been asserted that our Yedic ancestors were really a set . 
of drunkards, and citations from the numerous hymns to 
Indra have been made in proof of this assertion. But the 
most authoritative interpretations of the Yedas do not 
sustain this charge. 

As pure worshippers of the great phenomena of nature 
our Yedic forefathers were enthusiastic lovers of light and 
fearers of darkness. Indra was the favourite god of the 
Yedic nations, and therefore, in spite of his being regarded 
as the youngest, received a very great number of hymns 
in praise of his lofty attributes of wisdom and strength. 
Yet with this mass of hymns to search among. Oriental 
science has not yet reached unanimity of opinion as to 
what special contemplation of nature lies at the foundation 
of Indra-worship. But by such evidences as the hymns 
contain, and also by supposed etymological derivations of 
Indra's name — the word Indra is cognate with certain 
Sanscrit words meaning blue — a majority of authorities 
incline to think that Indra signified the personification of 
the blue heaven reigning over and dispersing the rain- 
clouds by combat with supposed cloud-giants, which Indra, 
or the blue heaven, destroys, setting free the waters they 
had held captive. This seems to clearly explain why the 
god Indra was always by his devotees assumed to be 
exceedingly hungry and thirsty : — 

" Heartily, as a friend serves a friend, the fire broiled 
For Mm, with its great power, three hundred cattle, 
And with these, that he might have strength to slay the dragon, 
Indra drank three lakes of soma, pressed by man." 

F. 29, 7. 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 

How natural that tlie Yedic peoples, in their worship 
of the god whom they conceived to be their saviour from 
terrible droughts and famines, should be eagerly anxious 
to supply him with as much soma (universal life-essence) 
as he required for the performance of his blessed office. 
Of course so much of the soma as was not poured on the 
sacrificial fire, the melting butter, horseflesh, or other 
offering, was probably not thrown away. But even from 
this it cannot be fairly construed that gross drunkenness 
was common, for the priests were evidently not a numerous 
body. 

Another thing to be considered is the fact that though Unique 
we possess no practical knowledge of soma, the Vedas ofXma!^ 
furnish abundant unanimous testimony to its unique 
properties. Besides its agreeable and refreshing qualities, 
it mast have had certain properties wholly unknown in 
any other intoxicants. Indeed, the Bdg-Vedas tell us that 
soma was a power in favour of morality, having the effect 
of intensifying and concentrating the moral impulses, which 
cannot be said of any now known intoxicant ; nor, so far 
as I have heard or read, has this effect been claimed for 
any other intoxicant. 

For example, we read (translated freely, but with faith- 
ful literalness as to the meaning) in the Rig-Veda (x. 25), 
this hymn of praise and adjuration to soma : — 

" Awaken in us a noble nature of heart ! 
Quicken us with understanding and knowledge, 
So that thy friendship may be unto us, O Juice, 
As unto the cows is the grass of the meadows. 

" Everywhere over the whole earth the people. 
By thy heart's grace, are softened and blest ; 
So strives also my longing towards thee, 
That I too may receive of thy favour. 

" Over our herds is thy watch kept, Juice, 
As they move numberless in the fields. 
On each thing that hath breath of life thine eye 
Gazes, and thou givest it strength to live." 

Such is the light which the Big-Vedas themselves throw 
upon the question of the effects of so7na drinking, and if 
a kind of inebriation attended the habit, it seems to have 
been distinct in nature and consequences from what is 



Ancient 
wine- 
traditions. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

meant by drunkenness in our day, for there is bofh. aspira- 
tion toward, and expectation of great good, such as could 
never have been expressed after even only one experience 
of the effects of drunkenness as we know it, with its 
appalling headaches, its dullness, lethargy, melancholy, and 
incapacity. The above verses — and the Vedas furnish 
many more of a like significance— are a pean to soma as 
the source of light and strength. Nowhere in modern 
Bacchanal song is such a key-note struck. But even were 
soma- intoxication essentially the same as modern drunken- 
ness, the soma drunkard, believing in soma as the drink 
of his deities, and as a source of inspiration and energy, 
is morally far above the modern drunkard. 

The sura, on the other hand, as we find in Indian 
history, became later a national curse, so that the great 
moral reformer, Manu, who lived six hundred years before 
Christ, found it necessary to impose the severest penalties 
on sura drinkers. For instance, he directed that those 
who relapsed into the habit after once abstaining, should 
be compelled to drink some of it while it was ignited. 

§ 3. Just as many of the legends and traditions of the 
polytheistic nations of antiquity taught that the intoxication- 
giving substances were direct favours of heaven to man, so 
likewise do several of the traditions and legends belonging 
to the monotheistic beliefs of antiquity point to Paradise 
as the land of the grape ; some, indeed, claiming the vine 
as the tree of good and evil, and Noah as the planter of 
the only grape saved from the Deluge. 

Let us take a glance at the ancient wine traditions of 
that great race which, though for close on two thousand 
years a landless people, and numbering in Europe accord- 
ing to the latest census only five and a half million souls, 
and spread over all lands, yet maintains a coherent organiza- 
tion, successfully avoiding amalgamation with or absorption 
by other nations or races, keeping its own interests intact 
while rivalling the Christian world in many aspects, out- 
flanking her in some and commanding her in others — the 
Jews. 

'No country is better adapted for vine culture than the 
plateau of Palestine, but since the Mohammedan occupa- 
tion this has been restricted to a few localities, the principal 
being in the environs of Hebron. 



DEINKTNG AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 7 

Vine culture was very flourisliirLg in tlie independent 
days of Israel, and wine was the cliief product of the 
country, and a fruitful theme of its traditions. 

Kotzebue, in his Journey through Persia, says that all 
the reasonings of the ancients on the subject seemed to 
indicate the Promised Land as the native country of the 
vine, and even the Greeks in their mythology, place the 
inventors of wine in Syria and the adjacent countries. 
At the present day a spot near Mount Ararat is still 
shown as the place where Noah is said to have planted the 
first vine. 

The Talmud — that gigantic collection of teachings, Myths about 
statutes, laws, traditions, legends, etc., peculiar to the beLrtL^for- 
Jewish race — enlarges upon the statements concerning bidden fruit, 
man's earliest existence as given in those much pondered- 
on, succinct, yet baffling first chapters of Genesis, and 
records of the Rabbi Jehuda that he thought the vine was 
the forbidden fruit.* 

But the Jews are not alone in the belief that wine Various 
caused the fall of man. The eminent theologian. Dr. ^PiJ^'^Jcaused* 
Lightfoot, is said to have held this idea, and Mr. More- the fail of 
wood, in his thoughtful work on Inebriating Liquors ^^^' 
(Dublin, 1838), makes the pertinent suggestion that Milton 
probably entertained some such opinion when, in Paradise 
Lost, he wrote of the fruit "whose mortal taste brought 
death into the world, and all our woes." 

" Soon as the force of that fallacious fruit 
That with exhilarating vapour bland 
About their spirits had played and inmost powers 
Made err — was now exhaled." 

But nearly thirty years before the appearance of Paradise 
Lost there was published in London (1638) an incon- 
sequent and shallow little work — though significant in 
this connection — written by one Dr. Whitaker, entitled 
The Tree of Human Life, or The Blood of the Grape, etc., 
which opens in these words : — " This subject is blood, in 
that is life ; it is of the vine and that is the plant of life, 

* It is curious to find that, according to the Rev. Baring Gould's 
Legends of Old Testament Characters, from the Talmud and other 
Sources, the inhabitants of the island of St. Vincent thought that the 
tobacco plant was the forbidden fruit. 



b THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

and if I should say a species of that was in Paradise, mj 
opinion might not in all places and amongst all persons 
be rejected . . . for as that (the forbidden fruit) was 
called the tree of life, so is the vine, and they do not only 
agree in the appellation but in their nature and effects 
also." 

Morewood (op. cit.) says that the Madagascar natives 

believe that " the four rivers of Paradise consisted of milk, 

wine, honey, and oil, and that Adam, who required no 

sustenance, having, contrary to God's command, drank of 

the wine and tasted the fruits, was driven from the garden 

and subjected to the punishments entailed on him and 

his posterity." 

Beliefs that Many learned theologians, both Jew and Gentile, hold 

wasapunish- that drink existed before the Flood, and that the Deluge 

drunkenness ^^^® ^^ ^ Nemesis for excessivo drinking, basing this 

belief on the words of Jesus : " For as in those days which 

were before the Flood they were eating and drinking . . . 

and they knew not until the Flood came and took them, all 

away."— F^'^e Matt. xxiv. 38, 39. 

That the vine Other Jewish doctors say that the vine which Noah 

planted was planted was one which the Deluge swept out of Paradise ; 

a sprig from that Noah, finding it, planted it, and that in the very same 

day in which it was planted it grew up, bloomed, and bore 

fruit, which Noah pressed, and swallowing its juice became 

drunken.* 

* Adam Fabroni, an Italian writer of the eighteenth century, in a 
work on the Ao't of making Wine, attributes to Mutardi-ben-Yasif, an 
Arab author (13 f. 10), the following curious legend of the vine : — 

" Noah, being come out of the ark, ordered each of his sons to 
build a house. Afterwards they were occupied in sowing and in 
planting trees, the pippins and fruit of which they had found in the 
ark. The vine alone was wanting, and they could not discover it. 
Gabriel then informed them that the devil had desired it, and indeed 
had some right to it. Hereupon Noah summoned him to appear in 
the field, and said to him, * Oh, cursed ! why hast thou carried away 
the vine from me .? ' ' Because,' replied the devil, ' it belonged to 
me.' ' Shall I part it for you ? ' said Gabriel. ' I consent,' answered 
Noah, ' and will leave him a fourth.' ' That is not sujaicient for him,' 
said Gabriel. ' Well, I will take half replied Noah, ' and he shall 
take the other.' ' That is not sufficient yet,' responded Gabriel ; ' he 
must have two-thirds, and thou one; and when thy wine shall 
have boiled upon the fire until two-thirds are gone, the remainder 
shall be assigned for your use.' " 

Dr. F. K. Lees, in his Tem^perance Text-Book (London, 1884), cites 



DEINKING A^IONG THE ANCIENTS. 9 

As to tlie planting of the vine by N"oah, fhe Talmud ^raditions of 

n T T • 1 -P- • J- m • •! -I • Noah and 

and other Je^^asn ^Titmgs give essentially similar descrip- Satan piant- 
tions. In Baring Gould's (op. cit.) the following version ingt^ievme. 
is quoted from Jalknt, Genesis folio 6a : — 

"Bowed ncder his toil, dripping with perspiration, 
stood the patriarch l!yoah labonring to break the hard 
clods. All at once Satan appeared to him and said, 
' What new undertaking have you in hand, what new fruit 
do you expect to extract from these clods ? ' 

" ' I plant the grape,' answered the patriarch. 

" ' The grape ! Proud plant ! Most precious fruit ! 
Joy and delight to men ! Tour labour is great, will you 
allow me to assist you? Let us share the labour of 
producing the vine.' 

" The patriarch in a fit of exhaustion consented. Satan 
hastened and got a lamb, slaughtered it, and poured its 
blood over the clods of earth. ' Thence,' said Satan, ' shall 
"it come that those who taste of the grape shall be soft 
spirited and gentle as this lamb.' 

" But N"oah sighed. Satan continued his work ; he 
caught a lion, slew it, and poured the blood upon the soil 
prepared for the plant. ' Thence shall it come,' said he, 
' that those who taste the juice of the grape shall be 
courageous as the Hon.' l!^oah shuddered. 

" Satan continuing his work, seized and slew a pig and 
drenched the soil with its blood. ' Thence shall it come,' 

tlie following from a still earlier work (than Fabroni's), Letters Writ 
hy a Turkish Spy (London, 1693) : — 

" Noali and his sons planted all sorts of trees, but when they came 
to look for the Vine, it could not be found. Then it was told Noah 
by the Angel, that the Devil had stolen it away, as having some right 
to it. Wherefore Noah cited the Devil to appear before the Angel ; 
who gave judgment that the Yine should be divided between them 
into three parts, whereof the Devil should have two [as much as to 
say that its fermented wine does twice as much evil as good] — to 
which both parties consented. This was the decision of Gabriel : 
That when two-thirds of the liquor of this Fruit should be evaporated 
away in boiling over the fire, the reviainder should be lawful for Noah. 
and his posterity to drink. And thou knowest that we Mussulmans 
generally obey this law in preparing our Wine. Let the Devil, 
therefore, in the name of God, have his share in the tempting fruit, 
for when that which inebriates [the aJ-ghol, or evil-spirit] is separated 
by fixe from the rest, this liquor becomes pm'e, holy, and blessed. 
This is the sentence of the ancients." — Yol. v. Lett. 12. 



10 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

said lie, ' tliat those who drink of the juice of the grape in 
excess, shall be filthy, degraded, and bestial as swine.' " 

Dr. J. Hamburger * gives a similar version : — 

"As Noah was occupied planting the vine, Satan drew 
near. ' What do you plant there ? ' he asked. 'A vine,' 
said ISToah. ' Of what kind ? ' ' Its frait is sweet,' repUed 
Noah, ' whether fresh or dried, and it also gives wine 
which rejoices the heart of man.' ' So ! Let us be 
comrades in this planting,' said Satan. ' So be it,' 
answered Noah. Satan then went away and returned 
with a lamb, a lion, a pig, and an ape, which he killed one 
after another so that the vine should be drenched with 
their blood. Then turning to Noah he said, ' These are 
the signs of the power of wine. We see man before he 
has taken wine as innocent as the lamb ; but soon after 
enjoying it, he is subjected to various changes. The 
temperate enjoyment of wine makes him brave as a lion, 
the intemperate use of it turns him into a pig.' " 

Colin de Plancy gives a Mussulman tradition as 
follows : — 

"When Ham had set out the vine, Satan brought and 
poured upon it a peacock's blood. When its leaves began 
to appear he poured over them the blood of an ape ; when 
the grapes began to form he watered them with the blood 
of a lion, and upon the ripe fruit he spilled the blood of 
a pig. The vine thus nurtured with the blood of these 
four animals has acquired these properties : the first glass 
of wine animates the drinker so that his vivacity is great 
and his colour heightened ; in this condition he resembles 
the peacock. When the fumes of the liquor rise to his 
head, he becomes as gay and full of antics as an ape. 
When he has become drunken he rages as the lion, and in 
the height of this condition he falls and grovels like the 
pig sprawling out in heavy slumber." 

In the Midrasch, r. 1, M. Absch 37, it is stated that 
when Noah was working on his vine plantation he was 
thus addressed by the Arch-Deemon : — " I have shared in 
thy labours, beware that thou dost not trench on my 
boundary lest I do thee harm." Noah did not heed the 
warning, but " drank to excess, and passed the boundary 

* Real Encyclopedie fur Bihel in Talmud (Breslau, 1870), part 1, 
pp. 1039-1042. 



DKINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 11 

of the domain of tlie - dgemons, and lay naked in his 
tent." 

In the Midrasch Berescliit Rahha, by Dr. Anguste 
Wiinsche, we read that Rabbi Jochanan finding in the 
Hebrew letters which give the story of the vine, that 
those spelling the word " woe " occurred fourteen times, 
warned his people against the use of wine. 

According to Tabari, an Arabian historian,* Ham, for Origin of the 
having laughed at the drunkenness of his father, was ^^^^^ S'^^v^- 
cursed by Noah that his skin should become black, as well 
as all the fruits which were to grow in the land he should 
inhabit ; and thus came the purple grape, which was the 
white grape before Ham transplanted it. 

§ 4. Let us also examine the mythological web which Summary of 
both veiled and defined the spiritual needs and religious in- and character 
clinations of the ancients, and essentially formulated the ^^o^g^j^f'"^" 
character and shape of the drink question among them. 
We know that among the ancient Romans, Bacchus was 
the god of wine, and that the infamous Bacchanalia, sup- 
pressed by the Senate's decree (e.g. 186), were the chief 
expression of Bacchus- worship among them. 

Bat Bacchus- worship was not confined to Rome, neither 
did it originate in Rome, nor was the sensual worship the 
only or even the chief worship, as we shall see later on. 

In the first periods of historic times, Bacchus-worship 
was a worship of all the active forces in nature, especially 
those of generation. We may therefore be justified in 
supposing that when certain exciting properties of wine 
were discovered by the Bacchus-worshippers, they attached 
especial value to it, so that wine-worship to the sensually 
inclined became identical with Bacchus-worship. Aristo- 
phanes, in the fourth century, calls wine the milk of Venus. 

Bacchus had, beside his local names, innumerable other 
names signifying the countless various manifestations and 
properties in man, beast, and plant, which he was supposed 
to inspire, create, or enjoy. 

He bore different names, also, in different countries. The original 
Several myths designate Noah as the original Bacchus, thought to be 
and of these the myth in India, about Satyavarman, is ^°^^- 
the most striking. As the ninth chapter of Genesis relates 
how Noah planted a vineyard, made wine, got drunk, and 
* Died A.D. 922. 



12 



THE FOUNDATION" OF DEATH. 



Noah said to 
be Saturn, to 
whom is at- 
tributed the 
discovery of 



Similarity 
between 
Greek and 
Egyptian 
Bacchus- 
worship. 



Bacchus- 
worship and 
the serpent. 



was in a shameful state discovered by his three sons Shem, 
Ham, and Japheth ; so the East Indian Furana (tradition) 
tells of Satyavarman who, in a disgraceful condition of 
drunkenness, was seen by his three sons Shema, Chama, 
and Yapeti. But Satyavarman of India was Adonis in 
Phoenicia, and this divinity, again (Selden, De Biis Syr., 
Syntagma 11), was the same as Osiris among the Egyptians, 
Dionysos or Bakchos in Greece, and Bacchus or Liber in 
Rome. Exactly how and where Bacchus- worship originated 
is not known, and the order of its spread is also matter of 
dispute. But these points, though so interesting, being 
non-essential to our purpose, we may not linger on them. 

Morewood (op. cit.) states, according to Bockhart, 
that Cadmus first brought the worship of Bacchus among 
the Grecians, and that wine was introduced to them by 
the Syrians. He also thinks that Noah was the same 
as Saturn, and Plutarch attributes the discovery of wine to 
that deity. On the other hand, Alfred Maury, in his History 
of the 'Religions of Ancient Greece (Paris, 1869), maintains 
that Greece had its Bacchus-worship independent of the 
Egyptian Osiris-worship, and that it was when regular 
communication between the two countries was established, 
during the Saitic dynasty, that the Greeks first discovered 
the similarity between their own and the Egyptian Bacchus- 
worship. 

As the ancients had several Bacchuses, so they had also 
more than one parentage for the god, whose father was in 
all cases the same, namely Jupiter, but not so the mother. 
In Egypt the mother of Osiris (the Sun, and later on, the 
Nile, which fructified the land) was Isis, goddess of the 
fruitfulness of earth and the source of wisdom, which is 
granted only to those who "by persistence in lives sober, 
temperate, and isolated from sensual pleasures, voluptuous- 
ness and passions, aspire to participation in the divine 
nature." 

But the Greeks and Romans attributed their Bacchus 
to a dual, really a triple motherhood. Two of the three 
were, however, of essentially the same nature, Semele and 
Proserpina the ravished daughter of Ceres, whom Jupiter 
approached under the guise of a snake, the reptile which 
plays so important a part in the Bacchus rites (the 
serpent and the forbidden fruit !). 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 13 

A golden image of a serpent was placed in the lap of 
the newly initiated, the satyrs were represented with 
serpents coiled around their heads, and the serpent was 
consecrated to Bacchus. In these ceremonies wine was 
indispensable, the worshippers were drunken, and the 
infamous character of these orgies are the lasting obloquy 
of the peoples who tolerated them.* 

In the mythologies of India, Egypt, Greece, Home, etc., 
the serpent itself was worshipped as the divinity of death, 
as is seen often in the designs graven on ancient tombs. 
The serpent was also placed at the head of the graven 
images of Hecate, the goddess of the kingdom of the dead 
(G-enesis ii. 17), and in all sorcery and necromancy the 
serpent has been an essential factor. 

Another strange symbol of Bacchus is the horns. In 
Egypt the bull Apis was consecrated to Bacchus ; in 
Phrygia, Zagraeus (Bacchus) was represented with horns. 
A horned image of him is often seen in the front of public- 
houses in England. 

Drunkenness and sensuality were, however, but one Eieusinian 
side of the ancient Bacchus- worship ; another phase as ^^^ ^"^^' 
opposite to it as light is to darkness was the so-called 
Eieusinian mysteries, especially the "greater mysteries," 
which were observed in the Attican city of Eleusis on the 
Eieusinian Bay. According to Strabo, the Eieusinian 
temple could at one period accommodate from twenty to 
thirty thousand people at a time. What is known with 
certainty about the " greater mysteries " of the Eieusinian 
Bacchus-worship is very limited. 

The works of the few writers of antiquity who ventured 
to treat of these mysteries — such as Melanthius, quoted by 
Atheneeus and by the Scholiast of Aristophanes ; Hiceus, 
spoken of by Clemens of Alexandria ; and one or two more 
— have tracelessly disappeared. All we know is that the 
Eleusinians worshipped Bacchus as the son of Ceres (in 
Greece, Demeter, the same as Isis in Egypt), and that their 
worship chiefly consisted of contemplations and demon- 
strations of the unity of God and the immortality of the 
soul. From two extraordinary papers on the subject 
of the Eieusinian Mysteries, contributed by Mr. Henry 
M. Alden, editor of Earjpers Magazine, to the Atlantic 
* See Juvenal, vi. 321, and Lactantius, Just., div. 120. 



14 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Monthly, during 1859-60, I quote these few passages as 
revealing more of the elusive and subtle spirit of the 
theme than any modern writing I am acquainted with, 
and as not being outdone in this quality by any of the 
native ancient authors : — " The story of the stolen 
Proserpina is itself an afterthought, a fable invented to 
explain the mysteries. The Eleusinia are older than 
Eleusis — older than Demeter, even the Demeter of 
Thrace — certainly as old as Isis, who was to Egypt what 
Demeter was to Greece — the Great Mother of a thousand 
names, who also had her repeatedly endless sorrow for the 
loss of Osiris. . . . The worship of this Great Mother is 
not more wonderful for its antiquity in time than for its 
prevalence as regards space. To the Hindu she was the 
Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the 
Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the north. 
According to Tacitus (^Germania, c. 9) she was worshipped 
by the ancient Suevi. She was worshipped by the Mus- 
covite, and representations of her are found upon the 
sacred drums of the Laplanders. She swayed the ancient 
world fi'om its south-east corner in India to Scandinavia 
in the north-west ; and everywhere she is the ' Mater 
dolorosa.' And who is it, reader, that in the Christian 
world struggles for life and power under the name of the 
Holy Virgin and through the sad features of the Madonna ? 
. . . And what do we read on the tablet of Isis ? — ' I am 
all that has been, all that is, all that is to be ; and the veil 
which is over my face no mortal hand has ever raised.' 
Not to Demeter nor even to Isis do the Eleusinia primarily 
point, but to the human heart, — ' I am the First and the 
Last — Mother of Gods and men. As deep as my mystery, 
so deep is my sorrow. Eor lo ! all generations are mine. 
But the fairest fruit of my holy garden was plucked by 
my mortal children, since which Apollo among men and 
Artemis among women have raged with their fearful 
arrows. My fairest children, whom T have brought forth 
and nourished in the light, have been stolen by the 
children of darkness. By the flood they were taken, and I 
wandered forty days and forty nights upon the waters ere 
again I saw the face of the earth.' . . . Life in its central 
idea is an entire and eternal solitude. Yet each individual 
nature so repeats, and is itself repeated in, every other, that 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 15 

there is insured tlie possibility both of a world revelation 
in the soul and of a self-incarnation in the world ; so that 
every man's life, like Agrippa's mirror, reflects the 
universe, is made the embodiment of his life — is made to 
beat with a human pulse. We do all, therefore, Hindu, 
Egyptian, Greek or Saxon, claim kinship both with earth 
and the heavens, with the sense of sorrow we kneel upon the 
earth, with the sense of hope we look into the heavens." 

Haggermacker, in his able work on the subject published 
in 1880, says that the mysteries dealt with the symbolic 
representation of the myth about Demeter and the im- 
mortality of the soul. 

We find also that such great men of the past as Pindar 
and Plato in Greece, Cicero, the slave philosopher 
Epictetus, and the noble and learned Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius in Rome, were enthusiastic admirers and zealous 
advocates of these mysteries. They were abolished by 
Emperor Theodosius the Great (379—397), in the same 
general decree which extinguished the sacrificial fires on 
all the yet remaining altars of polytheism. 

§ 5. Historic records of the nations of antiquity are 
replete with proofs that the chief destroyer of individual 
and national greatness was drink. The early Medes and 
Persians gave rigorous education to their youth, who were 
brought up on a regimen of bread, cresses, and water, in 
order to accustom them early to temperance, and to 
strengthen their bodies. ISTor were the four great Asiatic 
monarchies of antiquity, Assyria, Babylonia, Media, and 
Persia, conquered and destroyed by the sword until their 
earlier characteristics of manliness, patriotism, and morality 
had been sapped by drunkenness and debauchery. 

The vast Assyrian power whose foundation reaches Assyria and 
beyond historic record, after incorporating Iran, Syria, ^"^"^^ 
Babylonia, Egypt, Asia Minor, etc., was at last subdued by 
the rebel sober provinces of Media and Babylonia ; and 
that prince of voluptuaries, Sardanapalus, last independent 
ruler of Assyria, when he saw that all was lost, betook 
himself to the funeral pyre, together with his women, his 
servants, and his treasures. We are told that his motto 
was — 

" Eat, drink, play, and know that thou art mortal ; drain 
present delights, there is no voluptuousness after death." 



16 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Media and 
drink. 



Persia and 
drink. 



Familiar, but always impressive, is the acconnt history 
gives lis of the visit of the young twelve-year-old Cyrus 
to his grandfather. King Astyages of Media. The little 
fellow, destined later to overthrow Media and Babylonia, 
and to found the great Persian monarchy, was so astonished 
and disgusted at the riotous drunkenness of the Median 
court, he refused to touch the wine, a custom expected of 
him as cupbearer to his grandfather. He could not under- 
stand how the people were willing to drink till they had 
fallen into such a bestial state. 

" You seemed," he exclaimed, turning to his grand- 
father, and referring to a recent banquet — " you seemed to 
have forgotten yourself, to not know that you were the 
king, and when you wished to dance you could not stand ! 
My father drinks merely to quench his thirst." 

And time brought the days when this Cyrus subjugated 
Media and deposed his grandfather (b.c. 559). A few 
years after, when combined against by Babylonia and 
Lydia, Cyrus was defeated jast outside the walls of 
Babylon. But l^abunahid (Belshazzar) the victor, instead 
of following up his success, arranged in its celebration that 
infamous feast in the midst of which the ominous " Mene, 
mene, tehel, JJpharsin! " was flashed along the wall by the 
unknown hand, and during this fatuous debauch Cyrus, 
re-gathering his remaining forces, stormed the unprepared 
city and slew Belshazzar in his cups. 

Persia,* in its turn becoming weakened and emasculated 
by wine and the habits it generates, passed under the con- 
quering hand of Alexander the Great,t the same who for a 
time withstood the corrupting influences of Persian sybari- 
tism, and the intoxications of his own triumphs, but of whose 
death by intemperance Seneca writes : " Here is this hero, 
invincible by all the toils of prodigious marches, by all the 



* Persian history attributes the discovery of fermentation to 
Jemsheed, a monarch who lived very soon after tlie Flood. Being ex- 
ceedingly fond of grapes, he on one occasion thought to save some for 
future eating by packing them away in a jar. Of course, when he 
next resorted to them, he found in the stead of the luscious fruit, wine. 
Tradition says that Jemsheed's beautiful cup, carved out of ruby, and 
filled with " the elixir of life, lies buried under the ruins of Istakhar." 

t Alexander's physician, Androcydes, warned him in these words : 
"Eemember, king, . . . hemlock is poison to man, and wine is like 
hemlock." — Pliny, lib. xiv. chap. v. 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 17 

dangers of sieges and combats, by tlie most violent extremes 
of heat and cold, here he lies, conquered by his intem- 
perance, and struck to earth by the fatal cup of Hercules." 

It is difficult to imagine more horrible deeds than were 
done by some of the Persian rulers when under the influence 
of drink. On the plea of giving his people proof that wine 
had no effect on his nerves, Cambyses ordered his cup- 
bearer — the son of his chief officer Prexaspes — to go to the 
opposite side of the room, and there to stand quietly with 
his left arm raised over his head. Prexaspes was present, 
but before he could even imagine what was to happen, 
Cambyses had taken aim with a bow and arrow and shot 
the boy through the heart. He then had the heart cut out 
from the youth's yet trembling body, and held it triumph- 
antly before the wretched father's eyes, exclaiming that he 
desired that this proof that wine did not harm him should 
be made known to his subjects ; yet it is to be observed 
that Cambyses (according to Herodotus) confined drinking 
to himself, his army being allowed only water. This fiend 
married his own sister, and in a drunken debauch, during 
her pregnancy, kicked her to death. 

What views about drinking were held in ancient Persia 
is apparent from such facts as, for example, that preferment 
in office largely depended on how much a man could drink 
without losing his reason. Indeed, Cyrus, who fell in a 
duel with his brother Artaxerxes, had urged, among other 
reasons why he should be chosen before his brother, that 
he could drink a greater quantity than Artaxerxes " with- 
out being inebriated, or his passions disagreeably excited." 
And Athenseus (the Creek grammarian from Naukratis 
in Egypt) mentions that one of the Dariuses desired no 
greater encomium than that it should be engraved on his 
tomb that he could drink a very great quantity of wine 
without being' drunken.* 



* The Classical Journal for April, 1813, gives tMs specimen of 
old Persian poetry. The first is a ghazal ^ from Shefalee. 

" With, your liver intoxicated with blood, it is delightful to reel 



* The ghazal is a form of Persian poetry introduced into German 
literature by Riickert and Platen, and consists in repeating the- 
rhymes of the first two lines in the fourth, sixth, and eighth lines, 
etc,, the intervening lines not rhyming, and the measure being a 
matter of option. 

C 



18 



THE FO¥NDATION OF DEATH. 



Egypt and 
drink. 



Temperance 
efforts in 
Egypt. 



As tlie great Asiatic monarcliies fell first by wine and 
then hj the sword, so Egypt, the history of whose vast 
and highly civilized power reaches back over three thou- 
sand years before Christ, fell likewise into the-'sTStigh of 
drink and licentiousness, and was conquered by the Persian 
province (b.C. 332). Subsequently, Alexander the Glreat 
took it ; then Greek culture gradually drove away the 
Egyptian, and, after the battle of Actium, it became a 
E/Oman province till conquered by the Arabs in Xd. 641. 

The Egyptians, whose country was famous for its corn, 
are regarded as the earliest brewers, and it is claimed that 
they knew how to extract the juice of barley nearly two 
thousand years before Christ; but when they learned to 
ferment it, does not appear. They very early used what 
they called grain wine at their libations (the religious 
ceremony of pouring wine either upon the ground or on a 
sacrifice — living or dead — in honour of a deity) . Herodotus 
tells us that beer or wine drawn from barley was the liquor 
principally used, and he describes the clergy as feasting 
upon the sacrifices and quaffing the sacred wine. 

From about four to three hundred years before Christ, 
the Egyptians had a number of grain- wine manufactories 
at Pelusium on the Nile. But the ancient Egyptians knew 
also how to make intoxicating drinks from fermented 
juices, such as those of the palm, fig, and pomegranate. 

The condition of Egypt, before its invasion and desola- 
tion by the Persians, as regards temperance and morality 
was, as we know, most lamentable. Men and women 
gloried in drunkenness and shame. The few remnants of 
sculpture and painting that remain from the art of those 
days give ample proof of the condition of the people at that 
time. Masters are represented as carried home from their 
banquets in sottish unconsciousness. The dames are repre- 
sented struggling with nausea from their too copious 
bibbing, and hurrying the maids with the necessary bowl. 
Josephus speaks of them as the most debauched people. 

Yet great efforts had been made from time to time to 

like a flame ! intoxicated with, blood it is delightful to wallow on the 
ground ! wliilst jovial, to pkmder the bower like the breeze, to cull 
the rose, on which the gardener has bestowed his willing care, is 
delightful. But in a drunken fit, never be thou so weak as to rise up 
the first to make peace, because to be angry afresh is delightful." 



DEINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 19 

save Egypt from this evih Several of the Pharaohs issned 
stringent mandates against drunkenness, and the ominous 
ceremony — apparently not commanded — of placing in the 
centre of the banquet tables, when the wine was " beginning 
to tell," a skeleton crowned with a funeral wreath, dates 
from those days. 

Among the many devices to check intemperance, was 
a law that the friends and relatives of the dead should 
abstain from all wine and luxuries for a certain time (from 
forty to seventy days subsequent to the death) according 
to the rank and station of the departed ; the higher the 
rank or importance the longer was the abstention to be 
observed, which is significant of the great respect really 
felt for temperance. 

" If," as Morewood so eloquently says of ancient Egypt 
(op. cit.\ "a secret glow of veneration arises for a nation 
so long distinguished in the annals of antiquity for all that 
was majestic and mighty, whether we consider its almost 
superhuman structures, its profound erudition, its wonder- 
ful inventions, or the splendour, pomp, and glory which 
surrounded its early inhabitants," how different the feeling 
which presses on the heart of him who, standing to-day in 
the shadow of the Sphinx, sees only the lonely Mle and the 
far- stretching torrid sands, both alike as dumb and vestige- 
less to him of those nobler realities as are its strong lips 
and fixed unsleeping eyes ! 



But, in speaking of antiquity, we generally mean not 
the Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes, Persians, or even the 
Egyptians, but the Grreeks and Romans. The other great 
nations, with the exception of the Jews, have left but small 
traces in literature, science, and art, in comparison with 
those of Grreece and Rome, who for so many centuries, 
mutually and antagonistically, but absolutely, ruled the 
whole civilized world for the time, politically, intellectu- 
ally, and morally. Notwithstanding which, they exist no 
more. 

Who can point to a living, genuine remnant of either 
of these nations ? 

What destroyed them ? Is there danger that through 
the same causes, great civilized powers of our time may in 
their turn collapse and disappear ? 



20 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Greece and 
drink. 



Athens. 



Sparta. 



Eome and 
drink. 



In speaking of Greece, tliouglit always reverts to the 
two contrasting rivals, those republics of Athens and 
Sparta, so long dominating all the others. 

In Athens the severe laws of Draco condemned to death 
any person convicted of being drnnk. The wise laws of 
Solon (JDiog. Laert. in Solon i.) condemned an archont (the 
highest pnblic functionary in Athens after the abolition of 
royalty, B.C. 1068) to a heavy fine for the first time he was 
intoxicated, and in case of relapse — to death. A citizen 
seen to enter a drinkiug shop was dishonoured for ever, 
and no more was required to cause the banishment of a 
senator from the Areopagus (high court of Athens). 

In martial, brave, but cruel and perfidious Sparta — 
where domestic affections were crushed out by law, and 
the common decencies and moralities held in contempt in 
accordance with the Lycurgan institutions, which among 
other things enjoined common public baths for both 
sexes, and placed no restraint on the sexual appetites — 
they did fear the results of drinking. In fact, it is claimed 
that Lycurgus himself gave the command that annually 
the helotes (slaves) of Sparta should be intoxicated, and of 
the orgies ensuing among them the youth should be made 
spectators, to infuse in them aversion to drink. 

But not only in Athens and Sparta was this rigour 
shown ; Pittacus of Mitylene (island of Lesbos) punished 
crimes committed in drunkenness with double penalties. 

But in Greece, as in the great monarchies of the East, 
drunkenness prevailed against the efforts at restraining it. 



Wine culture, after passing from Persia and Syria to 
Greece and the Archipelago, was brought later on to Italy 
and Southern Prance. 

In the first days of Rome wine was almost unknown. 
Even as late as the second Samnite war (32?'-304) the 
Dictator Papirius vowed a small cup of wine to Jupiter as 
the most costly gift, if he should be victorious ; which he 
was (309) . That is, almost a hundred and fifty years after 
the foundation of Rome, wine was rarer than gems. 

And for centuries after the Samnite wars, though 
wine was imported in increasing quantities, drinking 
habits did not become general, until the time of Julius 
Cgesar, when it began to be cultivated in Italy. During 



DRINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 21 

tlie reigns of Augustus and Ms immediate successors, wine 
culture and wine rdaking became a passion among the 
Romans. During the empire it abounded, and history 
shows beyond question that enervation, loose morals, cor- 
ruption, and crime increased among the Romans in almost 
an exact ratio to the increase of their habits of drinking. 

Even the Stoics — those severe philosophers who held 
that human conduct must be restrained within the exact 
interpretation of the four cardinal virtues, Prudence, 
Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude — even they sometimes 
intoxicated themselves for the " refreshment of their souls." 
The women were as abandoned to drink and loose-living, 
and prided themselves on being able to stand as much wine 
as the men. And most conspicuous in these debaucheries 
were the C^sars, and the emperors Caligula, Nero, Vitel- 
lius, Domitian, etc. And yet in this very Rome, steeped in 
drunkenness, licentiousness, and crime, the Vestal Fire was 
kept inviolate and sacred, and we find, in Tacitus (Annals,:KV. 
36), that even the monster Nero, having dared to violate 
the temple of Vesta (by entering therein), was "seized 
with a sudden agitation and tremor in his body, as if the 
goddess had struck him with terror in the consciousness of 
his ill-deeds ; " and the same multitudes who could abandon 
themselves to all excesses of the Bacchanalia approved the 
condemnation to living burial of a vestal on mere suspicion 
of impurity, and could callously look on at the whipping 
to death (according to law, Livy, xxii. 57) of a vestal's 
paramour — so little was it understood that national safety 
depends on character, not on the inviolability of shrines. 
Have these lessons of the past borne fruit in the present ? 

But Rome had not always been such a cauldron of Temperance 
seething vices. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, ^*J^*e^^ 
Romulus promulgated a law which permitted the husband 
to kill his wife for drinking wine, as for committing adultery. 
The death penalty for adultery, as we know, was frequently 
inflicted in the early days of Rome, and Pliny (book xiv. 
chap. 13) relates that a certain Ignatius Mecennius, having 
killed his wife for having drunk wine, was acquitted by 
Romulus ; and Fabius Pictor, in his Annals, states that a 
Roman lady was starved to death by her own relations, 
because she had picked the lock of a chest in which were 
the keys of a wine-cellar ; and Pliny also assures us that 



22 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Cneius Domitius, a Roman judge, in a like case sentenced 
the defendant in tliese lines : " Tliat it seemed she had 
drunk more wine, without her husband's knowledge, than 
was needful for the preservation of her health, and that 
therefore she should lose the benefit of her dowry." 

The custom of greeting women by kissing on the 
mouth is said to date from this time, (!) and to have been 
adopted in order to discover if they had tasted wine. 

That the famous vine-planting edict, which forbade 
throughout the empire the further culture of the vine, and 
commanded the destruction of one-half the vines then 
flourishing in ifcs vast dependencies, was issued by Rome's 
worst debauchee, the Emperor Domitian, signifies how 
profound was the dread of the effects of drinking upon the 
nation's life and prosperity, even as felt by one of its most 
supine votaries. This edict remained in force for a hundred 
and eighty years, and then the Emperor Probus abolished 
it as far as France, Spain, and South- Western Hungary 
were concerned. 
Seneca's de- The terrible consequences of wine drinking in ancient 

tf/e result? f ^^^® ^^'® memorably described by IN'ero's famous teacher, 
intemper- the noblc Stoic philosopher Seneca, in his 95th Epistle, 
§ 16 : — "These excesses result in pallor, quivering of the 
nerves in the wine-soaked body, and a leanness from 
indigestion, more pitiful than the emaciation of hunger; 
uncertain and unsteady gait, distension of the bowels, 
which are forced to continually take in more than they are 
constructed to hold or make use of, yellow and blotched 
complexion, deterioration and rottenness of the fluids of 
the system, cramping of the hands from hardening of the 
Hgaments, dullness and torpor of the nerves, alternating 
with tremor. And the indescribable faintness of these 
victims, the torments they suffer by reason of disordered 
sight and hearing, creeping headaches, etc., etc., what 
language can convey ? " 



ance in 
cient Rome. 



Syracuse. As with Babylon, so with Syracuse — during a drunken 

debauch in celebration of victory, it was reconquered by 

the vanquished. 
Carthage. Sober Carthage, sinking under drunken and licentious 

habits, fell a prey to her rival Rome, yet Rome did not 

learn the lesson. 



DRINKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 23 

Julius Caesar, in Ms Gommentaries, wrote of the Sneves The Sneves. 
— tliat martial people who filled the heart of Germany, 
from the Danube to the Baltic — that they prevented even 
the importation of wine, so convinced were they of its 
destructiveness to strength and virtue. But these also fell 
to drink and then to the sword. 

"The writings of Hector Boetius," says Dr. Ralph Drink 
Barnes Grindrod (Bacchus, 1839), " show the severity of anSent*^^ 
the Scottish laws and the utter detestation in which in Scots. 
ancient times that nation held drunkenness. The laws of 
the ancient Scots in relation to those who kept houses for 
the sale of drink were peremptory and severe. ... It is said 
that Argadus, Administrator of Scotland (a.d. 160), con- 
fiscated their goods, pulled down the houses, and banished 
the men ; and under King Constantino the Second (a.d. 
861), if they did not submit to the law they were to be hung. 
One of this king's laws commanded young persons of either 
sex to abstain entirely from the use of inebriating liquors. 
Death was the punishment on conviction of drunkenness. 
The same law and same penalty extended to all persons 
who held a magisterial or other public post." 

As to the Jews, all readers of the Old Testament know The Jews. 
that — in spite of the patriotism, the marvellous coherence 
and vitality which makes the race unique among the nations 
— the kingdoms of Israel and Judah were strangled by the 
vine ; and as to the Mohammedans, usually and justly The Moham- 
regarded as the most abstemious of peoples, private ^^ ^^^' 
drunkenness is terribly prevalent among them nowadays, 
though perhaps less so in Turkey than in Tunis and other 
Mohammedan countries.* 

* It is weU known that tlie prophet Mohammed rigorously con- 
demned drunkenness, and it is related of him that in the fourth year 
of the Hegira, while his forces were contending with neighbouring 
tribes, some of his principal men, betaking themselves to play and 
drink, quarrelled in the heat of their cups, and raised such broils \ 
among his followers as to threaten the overthrow of all his designs, 
to prevent which mischiefs in the future, he forbade the use of wine, / 
and also all games of hazard, for ever. Both to strengthen and 
illustrate this commandment, he told the allegory of the two angels, 
Arut and Marut (Prideaux's Life of Mahomet), who were sent from Mohammed's 
heaven to administer justice in Babylon in her ancient days : to wit, drink 
that once a woman, whose affairs had been arranged for her by these allegory, 
angelic judges, invited them to dinner. She placed wine before her 
guests, and though God had enjoined them not to touch wine, they 



24 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Thus tlie history of the past offers a vast array of 
concurrent testimony that as long as drink was un- 
known to a nation, it remained comparatively strong and 
prosperous ; and that in the measure that nations have 
succumbed to drink, they have lost their independence, 
and passed in the most terrible harlotry from master to 
master, until given over by the gangrene of decay to oblivion. 

drank, and tken tempted tlie woman. She pretended to yield to 
their wishes, but made the conditions that first one of the angels 
should carry her to heaven, and the other should bring her back 
again. On coming into the presence of the Almighty, she told Him 
how she had been tempted, and had saved herself by seeking shelter 
with Him. In reward for her chastity, the Almighty changed her into 
the morning-star, and the angels were given their choice of being 
punished for their sin at that time or in the future. They chcse 
immediate punishment, and were suspended by the feet with an iron 
chain in a pit near Babylon, where they are doomed to remain until 
the day of judgment. For which reasons God forbade His servants 
ever to use wine. And in the Koran we read, " Wine and gambling 
are abominable inventions of Satan. Beware of forgetting God, 
because the demon would employ wine and gambling to fire in us the 
flame of impurity, and turn us away from adoration and prayer." 

Some of the sultans and caliphs took extraordinary measures to 
prevent drunkenness. Soliman I. ordered that melted lead should 
be poured down the throats of drinkers. 



( 25 ) 



CHAPTER 11. 

HISTORY OF THE DISCOYERY OF DISTILLATION. 

§ 6. Although mediaeval history gives us many both in- 
teresting and instructive facts as to the effects of drink and 
the efforts made to combat the evil during the dark and 
early Middle Ages, its record in the main is so similar to 
that of antiquity — with the exception that condemnation 
of the habit became more general, yet weaker, and indul- 
gence more universal and excessive — that I need not here 
dwell upon it,* but proceed at once to the history of the 
discovery of distillation. 

Owing to two acts of shameful barbarity, we are left in Reasons for 
nearly the same uncertainty regarding the discovery of J^gaSgthe 
distillation, as by chance, we are in regard to the discovery discovery of 
of the physical fact of fermentation. All the ancient 
Egyptian works on alchemy, some of which in all probability 
would have solved the question still baffling us, as to when, 
where, how, and by whom the art of spirit distillation was 
first discovered, were ruthlessly destroyed by the Roman Barbarities of 
Emperor Diocletian in his superstitious fear lest the fn^'^^^ru 
Egyptians should, by converting all available metals into 
gold, secure the means to regain their independence. And 
three hundred years later, when Egypt was taken from the 
Romans by Caliph Omar's chief commander Amru, that 
barbarian destroyed the famous Ptolemeian Library at 
Alexandria, reputed to have numbered 700,000 volumes, 
explaining his irreparable villainy on the silly pretext that 

* Those who wish to pursue inquiry in this direction will find 
abundant information in Morewood's Inebriating Liquors (1838) ; 
Eev. Father Bridget's Discipline of Drink (1876) ; Mr. Samuelson's 
History of Drink (1878) ; and in the works to which these authors 
refer. 



26 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

if the contents of these books agreed with, the Koran they 
were useless, if against it they were pernicious, and, 
therefore, in either case, their destruction was proper. 
Reasons why That such a Secret as the art of distillation should be 
was kepr^^ Confined to recondite works, and not spread, but indeed be 
secret. guarded from general knowledge, is not very surprising 

when the position of the discoverer (or participant in the 
discovery) is considered. He might at first have imagined 
that he had at last discovered that life elixir which in the 
dark ages seems to have been the one ray of hope to man ; 
and though experiment must soon have disproved this 
theory, he was still, unless sheltered by exceptionally high 
and favoured station, in danger of his life from the 
machinations of public and private avarice ; and, again, 
subject to total loss of the special advantages of his know- 
ledge, should it be generally disseminated. 

Distillation, generally speaking, may be said to have 
preceded the discovery of fermented drinks, because who- 
ever first condensed (and any one might have done so) 
some of the steam rising from boiling water, would be the 
first distiller, and in a like sense he who should be the first 
to (for any reason) boil fermented liquor, and condense 
some of its vapours on a cool surface, would, whether he 
knew it or not, be the first spirit distiller. 

But so long as such facts were accidents — that is, not 
results of man's understanding or intention, but occurring 
without attracting observation to the processes — they were 
practically not discoveries. 
S'sSiiS.''^ I>'^stillation^ is "the volatilization of a liquid in a 
closed vessel by heat, and its subsequent condensation in 
a separate vessel by cold." f But the ancients applied the 
, term to most operations of transformation, purification, 
and analysis. Some solids as well as liquids may be dis- 
tilled (but not all of them) ; for example, iodine, arsenic, 
chlorides of mercury, etc. 
Spirit. Spirit is a term which, though specially applied to 

alcohol, is applicable to any liquid produced by distillation. 
Spirit distil- Spirit distillation is the operation of extracting spirit 

from a substance by evaporation and condensation. 

* Latin, de and stillare ; Italian, distillare ; French, distiller; 
Spanish, destilar — to flow or fall in drops, 
t Webster's Dictionary. 



HISTOEY OF THE DISCOVERY OF DISTILLATION. 27 

Spirit distillation merely sifts out tlie alcohol. Alcohol 
boils at 173° Fahr., while water reaches boiling point first 
at a temperature of 212° Fahr. Consequently cider or grape 
or any juice containing saccharine matter, when subjected 
to heat, boils the alcohol first, which, in the shape of steam, 
can be passed into and deposited in a separate vessel. The 
point in this process is to secure the boiling point of the 
alcohol without reaching the heat at which the water will 
boil. 

Beatification is the re-distillation of what has already Rectification. 
been distilled. Its object is to separate more completely 
the water which may have been vaporized with the 
alcohol. 

§ 7. The original discovery of spirit distillation* is very Discovery of 
naturally sought for in those countries of antiquity dis- lationattri- 
tinguished for the greatest civilization and culture, and p^r^East*^^ 
writers on the subject are tolerably unanimous in pointing 
to the Far Eastf and, most of them, to China. :j: " Humboldt ^iiina. 
says that the process used by us in making sugar was 
brought from Oriental Asia, and that even the cylinders 
placed horizontally and put in motion by a mill with 
cauldrons and purifying apparatus, such as are to be seen 

* "There runs an old German legend, prevalent to this day in the 
duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, which details circumstantially his Satanic 
Majesty's claim to this important invention. The monarch of the 
infernal regions, so the story goes, was once fairly outwitted by a 
Steinbach man, who tricked the great enemy of mankind into 
entering an old beech-tree, where he found himself trapped without 
power of escape, and did not regain his freedom till the tree was cut 
down. As soon as he was liberated, Old Nick rushed frantically to 
his dominions to see how things had fared during his absence. To 
his dismay he found hell empty. Casting about him for some means 
of refilling Pandemonium with lost souls, he hit upon the idea of 
inventing brandy. Delighted with this happy thought, he hurried 
at once to the city of Nordhausen, and set up a distillery there, which 
was so successful that all the rich men of the place came to him to 
learn this new art of brandy-making, and in due time, abandoning 
their other business, became distillers themselves. ' And thus,' says 
the old chronicler of the legend, ' it happened that to the present day 
there is no other place in the world where there is so much of brandy 
burned as at Nordhausen.' " — Licensed Victuallers^ Guide, July, 1880. 

t The Asiatic Journal of 1840 cites an old Hindu manuscinpt, 
according to which a distilled liquor resembling brandy, called 
Kea-sum, was known in India from most ancient times. 

X Samuel Morewood. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

in tlie West Indies, are purely of Chinese origin, and were 
in use at a period long anterior to tlie visit of any European 
to that country. ... In China, a country which has 
preserved its civil polity for so many thousand years, the 
art of distillation was known far beyond the date of any 
of its authentic records. . . . That the Chinese were 
versed in all the secrets of alchemy, or, rather, in that 
branch of it which had for its object a universal panacea, 
long before this fancy engaged the speculations of European 
practitioners, there is abundant proof, since some of their 
empirics have from an early period boasted of a specific 
among their drugs which insures an immortality like that 
conferred on Godwin's ' St. Leon.' The search after this 
elixir vitoe originated, it appears, among the disciples of 
the philosopher Lao-kiun, who flourished six hundred 
years before Christ. ISTot content with the tranquillity of 
mind which that teacher of wisdom endeavoured to in- 
culcate, and considering death as too great a barrier to its 
attainment, they betook themselves to chemistry, and after 
the labour of ages in a vain endeavour to prevent the 
dissolution of our species, and after the destruction of three 
of their emperors, who fell victims to the immortalizing 
draught, they, like the alchemists of Europe, ended their 
researches under the pretence of discoveries which were 
never made. 

" The Emperor Yu-Ti, who reigned in the year 177 B.C., 
when about to put one of his ministers to death for drink- 
ing a cup of this liquor which had been prepared for him- 
self, was convinced of his weakness and folly by the 
following wise and sensible remonstrance of his minister : — 

" ' If this drink, sire, hath made me immortal, how can 
you put me to death ? But if you can, how does such a 
frivolous theft deserve it ? ' " * 

Dr. Baer, of Berlin, in his AlcoJioUsmus (1878), says 
that " Santscliu, a spirit distilled from various grains in 
China, but especially from rice, has been a common drink 
in China and Japan for several hundred years." 



That the Arabs knew anything of distillation previous 
to their intercourse with the Chinese empire (in a.d. 715) 
is contested. 

* Du Halde, Annals of the Monarclis, vol. i. p. 177. 



HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF DISTILLATION. 29 

Dr. Magnus Huss, in his excellent work Alcoliolismus 
(Stockholm, 1849-1851), says that " the art of distillation 
was first discovered in Arabia, but as regards arrack at 
least, the Chinese and Indians seem to have been their 
teachers." 

But there is ample reason for supposing that spirit dis- Distillation 
tillation was practically known, in Arabia long before the ^^ ^'^^^i^- ^ 
time generally accepted as the earliest. There seems little 
doubt that Geber (Abou-Moussah Diafar-el-Soli) knew Geber. 
the process of distillation. According to Leo Africanus,* 
Greber lived in the seventh century, according to others 
in the eighth. He was called Prince because of his great 
learning. Several of his works in Arabic, and one English 
translation, are to be found in the British Museum. In 
his Liher InvesUgationis Magisterii, Geber himself describes 
distillation and re- distillation, and proves that he under- 
stood the processes and the value of the retort (vessel in 
which substances are subjected to distillation or decom- 
position by heat). " Distillation is the raising of aqueous 
vapour in any vessel in which it is placed. There are 
various modes of distillation. Sometimes it is performed 
by means of fire, sometimes without it. By means of fire 
the vapour either ascends into a vessel or descends, as 
when oil is extracted from vegetables. . . . When we 
distil oil by means of water we obtain fair and clean oil. 
. . . By means of water, then, we must proceed with every 
vegetable, and things of the same nature, to ascertain their 
elementary parts. ... If not pure at first, put it back 
until it becomes sufficiently pure. . . . N.B. — At first it 
will send over only the water with which it was moistened, 
then the liquor to be distilled." f 

Whether Geber knew about alcoholic distillation is not 
distinctly stated. That, however, he or some disciple of 
his probably did so, we are led by a variety of circumstances 
to infer, and Morewood (op. cit.) quotes the saying that 
" Al-Mokanna, the veiled prophet, whose life and actions Ai-Mokan- 
are so beautifully detailed by Moore in his Lalla Eookh, ^^'s*^^*'^- 
when likely to be taken by the troops under the command 
of Almohdis' general, in the year Hegira 163, or 980 of 

* Hist. Crit. PhilosophicB, 1, vol. iii. p. 136. 

+ Cited from Geber by Samuel Morewood, in his History of 
Inebriating Liquors, Dublin, 1838. 



30 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Rhazes, the 

Moorish 

physician. 



Albucassis, 
a Moorish 
physician. 



Eaimundus 
Lullus. 
Arnoldus 
Villa-Novus. 



our era, to avoid falling into tlie hands of his enemies, 
after poisoning Ms whole family and followers, threw him- 
self into a vessel of aquafortis." 

§ 8. As regards Europe, it appears certain that Rhazes 
(Mohammed Aboubekr ibn Zakaria el E-hazi, 850-923), 
the celebrated Moorish physician, called the phoenix of his 
age on account of his vast learning, practised spirit dis- 
tillation. Dr. J. Friend, in his History of Physic (London, 
1726, vol. i.), says, "As to distillation, M. Le Clerc fixes 
the epoch of it in the time, of Avicenna " (a Moorish 
physician who died about 1036), "who, as he supposes, 
first applied this sort of knowledge in the way of medicine ; 
... if it be, as perhaps it may be . . . derived from the 
Arabians, the honour of the invention ought rather to be 
restored to Rhazes." Hoefer, in his great work. History of 
Chemistry, says positively that Rhazes knew how to distil 
spirit from grain, but for some reason his discovery did 
not become a matter of general knowledge. 

Two hundred years later another distinguished Moorish 
physician and chemist, Albucassis, or Aboul Casim (Chalaf 
Ben Abbas el-Zahravi, died a.d. 1106), is claimed to have 
discovered the art of distillation, and in his case at least 
there are positive proofs. The Arab historian, Wiistenfeld. 
in his History of Arahian Physicians and Naturalists (1840), 
demonstrates with documents that Albucassis knew how 
to make brandy, which disposes of the erroneous but 
familiar assertion — resting on the unsupported statement 
of Andersen in his History of Commerce — that distillation 
was discovered so late in the twelfth century as 1150, 
And yet it was first in the days of Raimundus Lullus 
(1234-1315) and Arnoldus Villa- Novus (1238-1314) that 
the knowledge of distillation began to be spread. 

Raimundus Lullus, born on the Spanish island Majorca, 
was first a theologian of eminent merits, but falling in love 
with a charming girl who was afflicted with cancer, he 
gallantly attacked physic and chemistry in the hope of 
learning how she might be cured, and his studies in 
chemistry were so thorough that he became one of the most 
famous of alchemists. He improved upon the crude mode 
of spirit distillation by using salts for the elimination of 
water.* 

* Ars magna Lulli, or " Lullus's great art," was an ingenious 



HISTOEY OF THE DISCOVERY OF DISTILLATION. 31 

Of Arnoldus Yilla-Novus, Professor of Medicine at 
Moatpelier, France, Dr. Thomson (System of Chemistry, 
vol. ii. 1817) says, " He was tlie first to form tinctures 
and introduce them into medicine ; " and citing from Crell's 
Annals (1796), Dr. Thomson adds, "He is said also to 
have been the first who obtained the oil of turpentine." 
He is chiefly known for the zeal with which he advocated 
the use of alcohol, being as identified with its spread as 
Friar Hernandez with that of tobacco, and as Peter the 
Hermit with the recovery of the Holy Grave. 

§ 9. When we consider that the alchemists — whose Reasons for 
philosophy, founded by Hermes Trismegistus, was based on SfsS^belief 
Aristotle's doctrine of four elementary substances of the ^^ alcohol. 
universe, air, water, fire, and earth — had been constantly 
labouring for hundreds of years, by means of various com- 
binations, to extract from these elements the universal 
essence of life, is it wonderful that on obtaining this 
mysterious spirituous fluid, comprising ingredients of all 
these elements, yet bafiling their efforts at analysis, they 
should at once cry out that at last was found the philo- 
sopher's stone, the .fifth element, the quintessence, the 
elixir of life ? 

The Adepts (those credited with having found the Reasons for 
philosopher's stone, and therefore perfect in alchemic art), of the ^^"^^*^ 
judging from the burning sensation it produced, and the masses. 
fact that it is obtained only by the well-managed and 
careful application of heat, believed that spirit contained 
the principles of fire.* 

Is it wonderful that when they found out their terrible 
mistake, they were exceedingly loth to acknowledge it, 
the belief of the masses being the only plank for their 
otherwise absolutely lost reputation ? 

Is it strange that the masses of the nations who had 
been for centuries kept in feverish expectancy of the great 

attempt at systematic arraiigem.eiit of the ideas necessary in general 
knowledge and ordinary communication, letters to be used as signi- 
fying the fundamental ideas, and mathematical figures to indicate 
their relations. Going at last as a missionary to Mauritania (north- 
west coast of Africa), he was stoned to death at the age of eighty, by 
the natives. 

* The North American Indians seem by natural instinct to have 
reached a similar conclusion in. their simple effective appellation — 
fire-water. 



32 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Various 
names for 
alcohol. 



Derivations 
of the word 
alcohol. 



discovery, should, on hearing the " lo triomphe ! " of their 
wisest leaders, make the eager chorus of that cry an^ 
clamour for the poisoning draught which they believed to 
he the " Water of life " ? 

§ 10. When first discovered, the distilled spirit was 
known by a variety of names, such as aqua ardens, aqua- 
fortis, vinum ardens, vinum, adustum (burnt) , spiritus ardens, 
etc. Arnoldus Villa-Novus called it aqua-vitcB or aqua-vini. 
Raimundus Lullus often called it aqua ardens and aqua 
vitce ardens. It was also called mercurlus vegetahilis, 
because bodily substances capable of being evaporated 
through circulating heat were termed mercurial, as it is 
by means of intense heat that mercury in the form of 
fumes is expelled from metallic minerals. " This name, 
however," says H. Kopp, in his History of Chemistry 
(Braunschweig, 1847), "came into disuse in the sixteenth 
century, and from that time forth the term alcohol became 
steadily more general." 

In the word alcohol the Arabic article al is prefixed, 
as in the word al-cheinj, to denote the superlative degree 
of the cohol, or in Arabic, koJil ; in Chaldaic, coJial ; in 
Hebrew, haal ; which means fine, that is, exceedingly fine 
and subtle. This word was used in Arabia as the name of 
an almost ethereally fine powder with which the Eastern 
dames were wont to tinge their eyebrows and eyelashes; 
hence because this fluid was found in Arabia, and was 
among fluids as fine and volatile as this cosmetic among 
powders, Europeans gave to it the same nam.e.* 

According to Dr. Edward Johnson, it is founded upon 
the Eastern superstition of the earth being infested with 
wicked spirits, and that when the first effect of this newly 
discovered drug was seen upon men, the Arabians imagined 
the persons to be possessed of a devil, which had either 
assumed the form of the liquid, or entered the body along 
with it, in which case they would in fright exclaim, " Al 
gJiole, Al gJiole," the evil ghost or spirit. f And even when 
this notion was put aside, the vast amount of mischief 



* Kev. Dr. J. Guthrie, in his Temperance Physiology (Glasgow, 
1877), thinks the word alcohol is " probably derived from the Arabic 
Tcahala, equivalent to the Hebrew cachal, to paint." 

t "0 thou invisible spirit of wine, if thou hast no name to be 
known by, let us call thee Devil ! " — Cassio in Othello, Act ii. sc. 3. 



HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF DISTILLATION. 33 

wMcli the liquid still wrought amongst mankind caused 
the retention of the name " Al ghole," which in course of 
time has been corrupted to alcohol. 

" Kopp thinks," sajs Dr. Baer (op. cit.), "that the word 
came from the Arabic technique, and meant j9o^ycZer and to 
pulverize, and that the spirit drawn over the carbonate of 
potassium to free it from water, was first called spiritus 
alcalisatus (alkali meaning salt), and thereafter by trans- 
position spiritus dlcoiisatus, which term went into alcool 
spiritus vini. So, for example, does Libavius * put together 
vini alcool and vinum alcalisatum. 

Says Dr. Huss (op. cit.), "When we remember that 
just at that period the medical science was at its lowest 
ebb, the masses placing their trust especially in arcana 
and universal remedies, we find it quite natural that a 
remedy so generally praised and so agreeable to the taste 
should become a household article, and from a medical The spread 
become a dietetic necessity, — at first on the pretext of its 
antidotal and strength- giving properties, but soon also on 
account of its intoxicating nature, — in cot as well as castle. 
And with such rapidity and avidity did this abuse spread, 
that by the middle of the seventeenth century, it was 
common among all classes, and chemistry was required 
to find new avenues of production in order to satisfy the 
cravings for drink. And this was found in the distillation 
of all kinds of grain and fruit, and lastly potatoes." 

* Libavius, who died in 1616, wrote the first chemical text-book, 
called Alchemia. 



34 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



CHAPTER III. 

PEELIMINAEIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERN DRINKING. 

§ 11. Thus far we have taken a brief survey of the drinking 
customs among the ancients, of the effects of the habits 
and the notions then prevalent ; and have touched on the 
discovery of distillation, and the spread of the use of 
alcohol as a life- elixir, as medicine, and as a beverage. 

But before dealing with the effects of alcohol on man, 
since distilled as well as fermented drinks became common 
in Europe, it will be necessary to say something about 
chemistry and physiology in order to be intelligible to the 
great masses who have so little time to keep abreast with 
the progress of scientific knowledge, but who use their 
narrow opportunities with an eagerness and energy de- 
serving far more respect and attention than they receive. 

That power of ancient thought over modern investiga- 
tion, of which we have spoken, is practically illustrated 
by the history of chemistry.* The Greek philosopher 
Aristotle's Terminology^ for example — a work arranging 
and defining technical terms — is not yet displaced by any 
other, and his general theories still underlie modern realism. 
A writer on almost every subject, Aristotle wrote also some 
works on plants and animals, and thus really originated 
the sciences of botany and physiology ; and though these 
works are now regarded as among his weakest efforts, and 
notwithstanding the patent errors in them, they were, 

* Chemistry, that branda of science whicli treats of the composition, 
decomposition, and changes of substances ; chemist, a person versed 
in chemistry ; chemically, according to the natural laws of chemistry ; 
chemicals, substances producing chemical effects ; molecule, an in- 
divisible compound of matter ; atom, indivisible ultimate of matter. 



PRELIMINAEIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERN DRINKING. 35 

owing to the weiglit of Ms great name, paramount over all 
other authorities for two thousand years, other investiga- 
tions beinof fenced within the lines he had drawn. 



It was first by the demonstration of the famous Irish The dis- 
philosopher and chemist, R. Boyle (1627-1691), of the cheSai 
existence of chemical elements, that Aristotle's "four ^jJJJ^"*®' 
elements " theory was finally and definitely disproved, and oxygen. 
Two of the chief elements in all life-combinations, nitrogen 
and oxygen, were not discovered, however, till 1772 and 
1774 respectively, the first by Rutherford and the second 
by Priestley and Scheele. But Lavoisier was the first to 
use these discoveries in laying the foundation of a philo- 
sophical science. .^ 

From Boyle's time and until the time of Antoine Lavoisierls 
Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) it was supposed that the SLTsV/ 
more complex compounds in the animal and vegetable oxidation. 
worlds were peculiar, that is, foreign to the mineral or 
inorganic, and were termed organic compounds because 
they are highly complex substances which constitute 
organic bodies, to distinguish them from the substances 
composing the mineral creation, which were termed in- 
organic compounds. Lavoisier dispelled this notion, and 
showed that just as oxygen, by combustion of carbon, forms 
carbonic acid, and, in combination with hydrogen, water 
in external nature ; so the oxygen in the inhaled air pro- 
duces corresponding changes in the carbon and hydrogen 
it finds in the animal organism. While engaged in experi- 
ments which he hoped might change the faint ray into the 
broad light of day, Lavoisier was seized and brought before 
Danton, who, when Lavoisier begged for only fourteen 
days more in which to complete his experiments that the 
results might be saved to mankind, brutally exclaimed 
that France wanted neither scholars nor chemists, and 
hurried him to the guillotine.* 

* " The man is thouglit a knave or fool 

Or bigot plotting crime, 
Who, for the advancement of his kind, 

Is wiser than his time. 
For him the hemlock shall distill ; 

For him the axe be bared ; 
For him the gibbet shall be built ; 

For him the stake prepared. 



36 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The founda- 
tion of scien- 
tific physi- 
ology laid in 
1850, in the 
cell dis- 
covery. 



The estab- 
lishment of 
organic 
scientific 
physiology 
in 1855. 



Lavoisier liad lived, however, to found tlie chemico- 
phjsiological science, indicating tlie intimacy and inter- 
dependence existing between all parts of tlie physical 
universe, and in this pointing out to us the vast scope of 
scientific physiology. But immediately upon his death his 
theories were scouted as the dreams of a visionary, and 
even so late as 1835 the famous German physiologist 
Joannes Miiller, in his Handbook of Physiology, ridiculed 
them, saying that the theory of water formation from 
hydrogen was invented to support that of combustion, but 
afterwards founded his brilliant chemico-physiological 
school on the basis laid by Lavoisier.* 

It was first by the establishment through Schwann — 
one of Miiller's most competent disciples — and Von Mohl, 
of the theory of the cell, termed by Professor Huxley the 
"basis of life" (1850-51), that a stable foundation for 
scientific physiology was laid ; and the probable truth of 
this cell basis of life has been demonstrated by the vast 
structure already reared on that slender beginning. 

Thus physiology, from being regarded merely as the 
science of the organs and their functions in animals and 
plants, has become what the name indicates (physiology 
— Greek, physis, nature, and logos, discourse) the science of 
nature, though its investigations of the inorganic world, 
the plants, and even of the animals, are daily becoming 
more experimental in order to obtain clues for solving some 
of the manifold mysteries of the human organism. 

From about 1855 dates the scientific researches in 
organic f pliysiology, and chemico-physiological science 
is therefore not quite thirty years old. In that time it has 

Him shall the scorn and wrath of men 

Pursue with deadly aim ; 
And malice, envy, spite, and lies 

Shall desecrate his name. 
But truth shall conquer at the last ; 

For round and round we run, 
And ever the right comes uppermost 
And ever is justice done." 

Charles Mackat. 
* With Morveau, Lavoisier formed the modern chemical 
nomenclature. 

t The term organic is now applied simply to the compounds of 
carbon, irrespective of their complexity (Baker's Physiology). 



PRELIMINARIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERN DRINKING. 37 

made tremendous progress, but has not yet solved all the 
mysteries of physical life, nor can it be faii^ly expected that 
it should have done so within such a space, though many 
seem to have expected it. 

§ 12. Alcohol has played a most prominent part in How alcohol 
chemical researches from the first, and for several reasons, pro^nent 
In the experiments made with alcohol, when the demand subject for 
became greater than could be supplied by the original vestigation.' 
methods, it was soon found that alcohol possessed the 
most marked and highly valuable properties for chemical 
experiments, the power of solving — with some notable 
exceptions, as we shall find later on — most chemical sub- 
stances, and of mixing in almost any proportions with 
most fluids. 

Then the demand made by both drinkers and abstainers, 
and more and more imperatively made, for information as 
to the exact effects of drink on the human system, has 
further stimulated the scientific study of alcohol, so that 
researches in this direction have been disproportion- 
ately greater than those referring to other chemical 
compounds. 

Until 1828 it was supposed that there was only one Discovery of 
kind of alcohol (viz. ethyl- alcohol — the name being derived ^eSVi, 
from the first syllable in the Grreek word aither, ether, and andamyi 
another Greek word, hyla, wood, hence wood-ether — which 
is the name for the spirit of wine), but in that year Dumas 
and Peligot proved that the distilled spirit of wood — 
known in trade as methylated (or methyl-alcohol, from 
Greek, vieta, with, and hyla, wood, hence wood-spirit) spirit, 
discovered by Taylor — was an alcohol. In 1839 the spirit 
extracted from the starch of potato was found to contain 
amyl very largely, and was called amyl-alcohol, from the 
Greek word amyloit, meaning fine meal or starch. Alcohols The great 
have since been discovered by the hundred, necessitating gTO^ps^and 
elaborate systematizations of the various series in arroups varieties of 

-,-,•■■ & r alcohols. 

and divisions. 

Of all these series and groups of alcohols we are 
chiefly, if not exclusively, concerned with the first or fatty 
series — so called because they were looked upon as pro- 
ductive of fat. Of these, only two, ethyl and amyl, 
require extensive treatment, though five of these groups 
are generally found together in all alcohols, viz. : — 



38 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The elements 
of alcohol. 

Oxygen. 



Hydrogen. 



Carbon. 



Methyl, or, according to Gerhardt, in Greek numerals, protyl or 1st. 
Ethyl, „ „ „ deutyl or 2nd. 

Propyl, „ „ „ trityl or 3rd:. 

Butyl, „ „ „ tetryl or 4<th. 

Amyl, „ „ „ pentyl or 5th. 

To show tlie reader how complex even tMs series is, 
I may mention that each of these five groups contains several 
kinds, and the number is constantly increasing. As an 
example, Basset, the French chemist, in his great work on 
Distillation, published sixteen years ago, mentions : — 

79 kinds of methyl. 
17 „ butyl. 
15 „ propyl. 

9 „ amyl. 

7 „ etkyl. 

All alcohols * are composed of three elements, viz. 
oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon. 

Oxygen (Greek, oxys, sharp, and genein, to generate, 
so called because originally supposed to form an essential 
part of acids) is a gaseous element, without positive taste, 
colour, or smell, but possessing strong chemical attraction, 
and forming about ODC-sixth part of common air. Its slow 
combination with other elements results in oxidation, and 
its sudden combination in combustion. 

Hydrogen (Grreek, Jiydoor, water, and genein, to gene- 
rate), the lightest of all known gaseous elements, is found 
in small but variable proportion in the air. Its increase 
produces rain, and it forms about one-ninth part of water. 
It is colourless, highly inflammable, and forms an essential 
part of almost all organic bodies. 

Carbon is a non-gaseous, non-metallic element. It 
forms the chief element in charcoal, enters largely into 
mineral coals, and in its pure crystallized state forms the 
diamond. It is combustible, and predominates in all 
organic compounds. In its chemical properties it differs 
from other elements in this respect, that it is capable of 

* " Alcoliol is the collective name of a class of organic unions 
which in their characteristics and modes of formation stand close to 
the ordinary ethyl-alcohol. They are all neutral, but unite, when 
freed from the watery elements, with acids, making compound ethers, 
from which they can again be restored by the addition of the 
elements of water." — Brockhaus' Conversation-Lexicon, vol. i. (1884) 
Ed. 13, now in process of pubKcation. 



PRELIMINAKIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERN DRINKING. 39 

uniting witli hydrogen in various definite proportions, thus 
forming the vast variety of hydro-carbons, and when also 
combined with oxygen giving rise to the carbo-hydrates 
which are found throughout the vast plant world. 

The chief substance among the carbo-hydrates, from The natural 
which alcohol is derived, is sugar — a most varied and aiSois^^ 
vastly extended substance not confined to the plant world, 
but spreading throughout the whole dominion of life. 
Scientists group sugars according to their different views. 
The simplest arrangement, I find, is one of three groups : — 

First group. — Glucose (Greek, glyJcos, sweet), which 
comprises principally grape sugar, fruit sugar, and inosit 
— a sweet found in many plants, but chiefly belonging to 
the muscles of the heart and tissues of the lungs of the 
higher animals. 

Second group. — The true sugars, viz., cane-sugar, lactose 
(Latin, lac, milk) or milk sugar. 

The third group mostly contains cellulose, or the chief 
substance for cell formation, i.e. starch, dextrine or starch- 
gum, and gluten. Prom all these various sugars alcohol 
can be obtained ; by direct fermentation from the glucose, 
and by -the conversion of the second and third groups into 
glucose, and then into alcobol. Alcohol has also been 
obtained, though in small amounts only, by synthesis, or 
chemical composition. 



Fermentation is the general name applied to the first The meaning 
processes of nature's taking to pieces some organic com- of fermen-^^^ 
pound or body, either for further construction of organic tation. 
life -supply ; or for dissolution into elements — the principle 
of life having fled. 

Fermentation (Latin, fervere, to boil) was a term ori- 
ginally used concerning all phenomena where a liquid or 
pasty mass was seen to lift or bubble, discharging gas with- 
out an apparent cause. Chemically it means a reaction in 
which an organic compound under the influence of a ferment 
changes inadetermined sense at the expense of the substance. 

It is now known that all fermentation is the work of "^^^ nature, 

TIT. . ife , • • 11 action, and 

so-called micro-organisms,* or active organisms so small influence of 

ferments on 
* Micro-organisms called bacteria at once set feeding on the dead li^^. 
tissues ; but if excluded, or even through chemical processes stopped 
in their enterprises, fermentation ceases. 



40 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

that, as Professor Fliigge, of Gottingen, states (in his work 
on Ferments and Micro-par asites^^vJoli^hed at Leipsic, July,. 
1883) : — " They stand on the border of invisibiHty, even 
to the eye armed with the best optical means, and yet, with 
their nndreamt-of spread and deeply invading activity, 
play a most important role in the household of nature and 
the existence of man. They cause the destruction of life- 
less organic substances, occasion the oxidation of otherwise 
non-oxidable stuffs. They provide the plants continually 
with their chlorophyll " (Greek, klooros, light green) — " the 
green colouring matter of the leaves and stalks of plants — 
excite the most diverse fermentations, and to us they are 
an indispensable means of preparing our ordinary foods. 
. . . On the other hand, they live as parasites on our 
cultivated plants, and bring about their degeneration and 
death. They produce at times the severest diseases, both 
in lower and higher animals, and at times threaten man 
with murderous epidemics. ... In air, in earth, water, 
everywhere we find these same little organisms ; we recog- 
nize them in our nearest surroundings, in the home, in the 
food, as permanent companions, and incidentally as for- 
midable enemies. Most of these important little lives are 
plants of very elementary structure and the simplest 
procreative processes, but of extraordinary powers of 
multiplication. A few of them belong to the lowest 
animals. 
Date of the g 13, ^g y^Q have Seen, alcoholic fermentation, though 

coveryofthe known from prehistoric times, was not understood. Later 
o?aicohoifc ^^ ^^® observed as limited to sweet substances, but the 
ferments. secret of the fermentation processes has remained unsolved 
till our day. The real nature of the alcoholic ferments 
' or yeasts as living fungi, was first discovered in 1835 by 
Cagniard Latour, and in 1837 the already mentioned 
German, Schwann, proved that the atmosphere is always 
charged with ferments. Since then the microscopic science, 
headed by such men as Kolliker, Pasteur, Liebig, Nageli, 
and others, has succeeded in revealing a universe of micro- 
scopic plants and animals. 
Generation ^he ycast fungi consist of single cells generated by 

fungi. sprouting, at one or both ends of the mother- cell, smaller 

membrane-like bladders which, filling with part of the 
contents from the mother-cell, gradually assume her form 



PEELIMINAEIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERI^ DRINKING. 41 

and size, being" divided from lier hj a wall ; tlie procreation 
from cell to cell bj this process is infinitely rapid. 

By alcoholic fermentation, glucose is dissolved into from 
30 to 31 per cent, alcobol, 60 per cent, carbonic-acid gas,* 
and a small portion of other compounds, the chief of them 
being from 2'5 to 5*6 per cent, glycerine, and 0'4 to 0'7 
succinic acid, etc. 

All fermentations can be divided into tvs^o groups : The lethai 
the one for maintaining life, and the other for producing afcSi? 
death and dissolution into original elements. Alcoholic fermenta- 
fermentation belongs to the latter group, because, as far 
as known, alcohol can never be obtained from any living 
organism, substance, or chemic compounds containing life 
— death and decay being necessary pre-conditions for its 
natural production. And as alcoholic fermentation is a 
saccharine fermentation, and as saccharine fluids are 
inherent in all organic compounds — saccharine ferments 
being spontaneously present wherever saccharine fluids 
exist — and as all organic compounds are subject to the 
law of death and decay, it follows that all organic sub- 
stances, in a certain proportion to their saccharine con- 
tents, may be productive of alcohol, i.e. be alcoholizable. 
And these facts have been practically demonstrated in the 
various domains of nature by recent chemical experiments, 
though the alcohol discovered has been small in quantity, 
owing probably to its volatility and proneness to oxidation 
and further dissolution. 

Thus, for example, we are told by the French scientist Saccharine 
Muntz, that he had found traces of alcohol in water, and tion explains 
that he had reason to believe that the carburetted body Scohorfoumi 
indicated by Boussingault and De Saussure as beiner in water, air, 

•^ ° ° and earth. 

* CarboniG-acid gas forms 0*03 to 0'06 per cent, of the atmo- 
sphere. It streams forth from active volcanoes, as well as from many 
fissures in the earth, e.g. the Dog Cave at Naples, the vapour caves 
at Pyrmont, Yichy, Hauterive, the Death Valley in Java, etc. 
Carbonic-acid gas is generally formed in plant or animal decom- 
positions ; for instance, wood, tallow, oil, are changed through 
atmospheric combustion into carbonic acid and water. Where organic 
substances are richly strewn in the ground there is also much, 
carbonic acid, hence the presence of so much of this deadly gas in 
coal mines, etc. Animals expirate carbonic acid gas, because through 
oxidation, organic substances are solved into carbonic acid gas and 
water. 



42 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

present in the atmosphere was alcoliol. And there is 
every reason to believe this to be a fact, there being, 
always in the air, as in the water, saccharine compounds. 
So also, when we are told that there is alcohol in the soil, 
we have reason to credit it. We know the soil consists 
chiefly of the material residue of organic and inorganic 
decomposition, and of course in earth, as in air and water, 
alcohol is a product of the decompositions of saccharine 
particles. 

May not the carbonic-acid gas, or deadly vaponr found 
especially in coal mines, be a residue in no small degree of 
the carbonic-acid gas formed in far distant ages by the 
alcoholic fermentation of the organic matter which has 
been through succeeding ages turned into coal ? And 
may it not be that the alcohol obtained through dry dis- 
tillation — i.e. through heat and exclusion of air — is to 
some extent only the released product of natural ancient 
fermentations ? * 
Alcohol in In the preparation of bread the yeast changes the 

^^^ ■ starch into dextrine or grape sugar. In the further 

fermentation the grape sugar changes about 2 per cent, of 
the flour into carbonic acid and alcohol ; the carbonic-acid 
gas causes the sponginess of the dough, the alcohol in the 
baking evaporates. Bread kept for some days in a warm 
room through the action of spontaneous ferment re-acquires 
alcohol from, according to Bolas, 0*12 to 0'32 per cent., 
and if left longer it is soured by the action of acetic 
ferments into sour bread. f 

* "Alcohol from Smoke. — The latest instance of the Titilization 
of waste products is that effected at Elk Eapids, Michigan, with the 
gaseous matter given forth by a blast furnace in which are manu- 
factured fifty tons of charcoal iron a day. In the case to which we 
refer, the vast amount of smoke from the pits, formerly lost in the 
air, is now turned to account by being driven by suction or draught 
into stills surrounded by cold water, the results of the condensation 
being — first, acetate of lime ; second, methyl-alcohol ; third, tar ; 
the fourth part produces gas, which is consumed under the boilers. 
Each cord of wood produces 29,000 cubic feet of smoke, 2,900,000 
feet of smoke handled in the twenty-four hours producing 12,000 lbs. 
of acetate of lime, 200 gallons of alcohol, and 25 lbs. of tar," — Louis- 
ville Medical News, March 17, 1883. 

t " Some New York bakers are, it appears, exercising their 
minds with the reflection that about one thousand gallons of alcohol 
are daily wasted in the ovens of the Empire City, and they have 



PEELIMINARIES TO THE STUDY OF MODERN DEINKING. 43 

But alcoliol lias also been detected in the wastes of Alcohol in 
living organisms. Gntzeit claims to have found ethyl and JsmsfpS^,' 
methyl alcohols mixed with butyric and acetic ethers in and animals', 
growing plants — parsnips, and in Anthriscus cerefolimn and 
Heracleum giganteiim and other plants. 

Alcohol as a purely natural product is not confined to 
the plant world. According to attested results of ex- 
periments by Becamp, alcohols and acids are constant and 
immediate outcomes of animal death, so that very shortly 
after death takes place alcoholic fluids are obtainable from 
the tissues. 

But it is claimed that alcohol is to be found not only 
in dead but even in living animals. Marcownicoff detected 
alcohol in the urine of diabetic patients, and recently it 
has been proved that in the excrements of all healthy per- 
sons alcohol is traceable, and the reason is not very far to 
seek. The glucose in the body is acted upon by the always 
spontaneously present ferments of glucose; alcohol and 
carbonic acid must be the result. 

§ 14. As alcohol is one of the chief products in the first 
chemical combination of organic dissolution, so it is but 
natural that it should possess strong potential tendencies 
towards further dissolutions, and as oxidation is the chief 
agent in both solution and dissolution, so alcohol has a 

been making inqniries as to how they may save the spirit. It is a 
fact that wherever yeast fermentation ' is allowed to set in, there 
alcohol is produced, and that it is quite possible, by condensing the 
■vapours from a batch of bread in the process of baking, to recover 
quite a considerable quantity of alcohol. But the New York bakers 
are would-be plagiarists. Some years ago a company was started in 
London to make bread and recover the alcohol, but owing partly to 
the bad arrangements adopted, and partly to the opposition of rival 
bakers, the scheme was a failure. The rival bakers adopted the 
simple expedient of announcing that their bread was sold " with all 
the gin in it ; " and strange to say they obtained the public custom, 
although there was no more alcohol in their bread than in that made 
by the company. It is quite possible to obtain a small quantity of 
alcohol from the vapours arising from a baker's oven, but any 
attempt to kill two birds with one stone in this case results in the 
practical escape of both ; for if the bakery is converted into a 
distillery the bread is spoilt, and the spirits are scarcely worth the 
trouble, seeing that they can be made cheaply enough by legitimate 
means, and any attempt to make them illegitimately would bring on 
the baker aU the rules and regulations of the Excise." — Echo, 
January 26, 1884. 



u 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The ten- 
dency of 
alcohol to 
decompose 
into ele- 
ments. 



strong attraction to oxidation, and rapidly goes over from 
one combination to another, gradually freeing tlie atoms 
until finally only tlie original elements of its composition 
— namely, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen — remain, set free 
to enter into new combinations. 

The irresistible tendency of alcohol to dissolve things 
into their elements, by means of oxidation and hydration, 
is shown in the very process of distillation, for notwith- 
standing the elaborate precautions to obtain what is called 
pure alcohol — we see the alcohol itself proceeding — some 
of it — into further stages of dissolution by freeing one or 
more atoms belonging to alcoholic compounds, such as 
acetic ethers and aldehydes. 

As an example of the successively rapid changes towards 
absolute dissolution which alcohols pass through if free to 
do so, I may cite changes peculiar to ethyl- alcohol, the 
most common, least intoxicating, and with which we are 
most concerned. Its chemical formula CaHgO, or two 
parts carbon, six parts hydrogen, and one part oxygen, 
easily changes. H being freed, we have acetic ether ; 
another H being removed, there is aldehyde. With this 
result, double the and we have acetic acid or spirit of 
vinegar, etc. (any alcoholic drink exposed only for a short 
time to the air changes in part into these compounds). 
All acids substitute an for Hg thus : — 



Methylic ... 


CH4O 


Formic 


... CHA 


Ethylic ... 


... C.HgO 


Acetic 


.. C,H,0, 


Propylio ... 


... C3H3O 


Propionic . . . 


.. C3HA 


Butylic ... 


... C.HioO 


Butyric 


.. C.H^O, 


Amylic 


... C,H,,0 


Valeric 


.. C.H.oOa 


Caproylio 


... CeH,,0 


Caproio 


.. CgH.A 



for alcohols. 



§ 15. Methyl and ethyl alcohols have been found useful 
in various ways in civilization — methyl in particular, because 
of its comparative cheapness. Methyl- alcohol, as methy- 
Various uses lated Spirit (which is ethyl-alcohol mixed with methyl- 
alcohol to such an extent as to spoil it for drinking), is very 
extensively used as varnish, in methyl-aniline colouring, as 
oil for spirit lamps, and for dissolving resin and fatty sub- 
stances generally, essential oils, ethers, alkaloids, most 
organic acids and certain of their salts. It enters largely 
into the manufacture of candles, india-rubber, and collodion, 
in which shape it is specially used by photographers, for 



PEELIMINAEIES TO THE STUDY OF MODEEN DEINKIXG. 45 

aromatic waters, cleansing of glass, etc. Pettenkofer, tlie 
Mnnicli chemist and physiologist, discovered some years 
ago how, bj means of alcoholic vapours, to restore faded 
oil paintings. Aldehyde is principally used in silver 
amalgamation on glass. 

§ 16. But in nothing is alcohol more used than in Sources of 
intoxicating drinks, in all of which it forms the chief founVin ° ^ 
intoxicating principle. The alcohol is obtained from grapes, brinks, 
whence by fermentation wine, and by distillation of wine, 
wine alcohol, which, containing about 30 per cent, of water, 
gives the true brandies ; tree fruits — apples, pears, peaches, 
etc., which, by fermentation, produce ciders, and whose 
distillations give apple, pear, and peach spirit, and whose 
dilution by water gives the fruit brandies. By similar 
processes, currant, lemon, and other brandies are obtained. 
But the most prominent sources of alcohol are potatoes, 
sugar refuse, and grains ; of the latter especially barley, 
rye, and maize, because of the abundance of starch which 
they contain, which by diastatic ferment is turned into 
dextrine, then grape sugar, then spirit. 

The process of dextrine development in grain is called Malting. 
the malting, by which the grain, first being caused to 
sprout in warm moisture, is then slowly heated till the life 
principle is extinct. 

The spirit from sugar refuse is called rum ; that from Various 
potatoes, barley, rye, and maize, whiskies and gins. The drinks.^^ 
gins are flavoured with strong aromatics, especially juniper 
berries. Barley is chiefly used in the manufacture of 
beers. And beer is a comparatively weak alcoholic drink 
in a state of second fermentation, generally flavoured with 
hop. 

Fermented milk is called koumiss, and in Russia, by 
distillation of koumiss, a brandy called araca asa is obtained. 
Arrack is a brandy obtained from rice ; absinthe a cordial 
of alcohol flavoured with wormwood ; tafia is a brandy 
from molasses, and kirsch a brandy from the blackberry. 



46 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ADULTERATIONS. 

S"ir^uof^*^ § 17. All adulteration is induced by desire for profit, and 
adulteration, therefore its nnscrupulousness is limited only bj tbe pro- 
bability of success. Detection and consequent loss is tbe 
only thing the adulterator fears. When we remember 
tbese facts, togetber with the marvellous adulterability * 
of alcobolic liquors, we can no longer wonder at its vast 
extension, and tbe employment therein of all kinds of 
poisons. 

Tbe cbief means of all kinds of liquor adulterations is, 
of course, water, because while it costs nothing, it gives 
a greatly increased, though fictitious, value to the drink 
by increasing its volume. That water makes the liquor 
less harmful is no justification for its employment, and 
those who do justify it ignore the moral character of the 
act, at the same time that they tacitly imply the harmful 
consequences from drinking liquor. But we find also our 
strongest poisons, such as strychnia, stramonium, sulphuric 
acid, oil of clove, bitter almond, sugar of lead, used together 
' with innocent mixtures, all of which in certain proportions 

* In his work on Alcohol and its Physical Effects (New York, 
1874), Colonel Dudley says — 

*' With few exceptions the entire liquor trafl&c of the world is not 
only a fraud, but — perhaps without all the dealers being aware of the 
fact — it amounts to a system of drugging and poisoning. The 
business of making adulterated liquors has been so simplified that 
any novice who knows how to make a punch or a cocktail can learn 
in a short time to make any kind of liquor that will pass muster with 
nine-tenths of the community." 

Bouchardat says, " The wine sold by retailers consists of alcohol, 
colouring matters, water, and a very small quantity of natural wine." 



ADULTERATIONS. 47 

are disguisable in alcohol, as well as substitutable for it. 
Alfred Fournier, in Ms celebrated article in the New Dic- 
tionary of Medical and Surgical Practice (Paris, 1864), sajs 
of thirty-six samples of spirits and brandy retailed at low 
price in the Faubourg of Rouen, and seized by the police, 
twenty-one contained sulphuric acid, and five acetic acid. Enumeration 
And Dr. Parkes (Hygiene, London, 1878) gives no less than ^oj^o^g'Jfsgjj 
nineteen poisons in his formidable table of adulterations. 
Among these are ferrous sulphate, sulphuric acid, essentia 
bina, colocynth, colchicin, cocculus indicus, strychnine, 
tobacco, copper, and lead. 

A "Practical Man" (London, 1826), in giving recipes 
for adulteration, says that in a certain adulteration of brandy 
other " fermentable matters are added to the must before 
the fermentation has taken place ; " and of the depravity of 
another adulteration he adds, " The acid used in combina- 
tion of counterfeit brandy is commonly called spirit of 
nitre, and some distillers use quicklime in rectifying their 
spirits." In 1829 another work, very able and thorough 
for its time, entitled Wine and Spirit Adulteration Un- 
masked, tells us that " spirits of wine are generally made 
from the fruits and refuse of all other spirits and compounds 
put together and distilled." 

Here is a short simple recipe for making old Jamaica 
rum : — 

" Sixty gallons proof spirit and one pound of rum 
essence " (rum essence is composed from acetic ether, 
saltpetre, wine ether, butyric-acid ether, birch- oil tincture, 
oak bark, etc., mixed). Very simple, but just think of 
drinking corn whisky while supposing it to be Jamaica 
rum ! Dr. Riant gives a recipe for making rum of new- 
scraped leather, oak bark, oil of clove, tar, and molasses 
alcohol. 

§ 18. The liquors most adulterated are the wines, and Eeasons for 
for many reasons. The art of vinification to even the Jf wiues?°^ 
most skilled and honest wine-makers is a very difficult 
science. The accidents of manufacture, such as season, 
fervidity of fermentation, prolonged access of air, and 
numerous others, materially affect the colours and flavours 
of the wines, and, indeed, the present public taste — long 
accustomed to only same-tasting wines, because of their 
adulterations — would have nothing to do with pure wines 



48 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Rhine wine 
adultera- 
tions. 



Port wine 
adultera- 
tions. 



wliicli wanted the familiar adulterated flavours. Thus 
even the would-be honest wine-dealer has hardly any alter-, 
native to the selling of adulterated wines; and chemical 
science has discovered abundant means and methods both 
for adulteration and for artificial manufacture. 

We find that wine adulteration commences from the 
moment the fruit is gathered. Says Dr. Thudichum, in his 
lecture on Wines (London, 1869) — 

" Spanish, Portuguese, and French wines of the South 
are plastered ; that is to say, plaster of Paris is dusted over 
the grapes immediately after they are gathered, or while 
they are in the press, or while they are in a state of 
must." 

Mr. Walter McGee, under the nom de plume " Pedro 
Yerdad," wrote A Booh about Sherry (London, 1876), a 
trenchant essay on sherry adulteration and the incapacity 
displayed by the appointed Government analysts for its 
detection, writes the following concerning the Rhine 
wines : — 

" In the district of Neuwied, things have come to a 
sorry pass indeed. The evil has been imported by wine- 
dealers from abroad, who come in numbers every autumn, 
and, whether the vintage promises well or ill, buy up the 
growing grapes, and make from them five or six times the 
quantity of wine which the press of an honest vintner 
would produce. The reader will ask, ' How is that 
possible ? ' Here is the explanation. 

" During the vintage, at night, when the moon has 
gone down, boats glide over the Rhine, freighted ^vith a 
soapy substance manufactured from potatoes and called 
by its owners sugar. This stuff is thrown into the vats 
containing the must ; water is introduced from pumps and 
wells, or, in case of need, from Father Rhine himself. 
When the brewage has fermented sufficiently, it is strained 
and carried away." 

§ 19. For some centuries past, ports and sherries have 
been the principal wines drunk in England. Before the 
Select Committee on Wines (House of Commons, 1852), 
Cyrus Redding stated that though the annual export of port 
wine amounted to only twenty thousand pipes, no less than 
sixty thousand were consumed ; a goodly amount being 
concocted out of Cape wines, cider, and brandies, etc., most 



ADULTERATIONS. 49 

of tbe spurious ports being concocted in tlie London docks, 
presumably for exportation. 

Mr. Vizetellj, the British. Wine Commissioner to the 
Vienna Exposition, writes in his Wines of the World 
(London, 1875) : "Nowadays spurious port is produced on 
a large scale at Tarragona, in Spain, which imports con- 
siderable quantities of dried elderberries, presumably for 
deepening the colour, if not actually for adulterating the 
so-called ' Spanish Reds.' A couple of years ago I tasted 
scores of samples of fictitious ports in every stage of early 
and intermediate development, rough, fruity, fiery, rounded 
and tawny, in the cellars of -some of the largest manu- 
facturers at Cette, and saw some thousands of pipes of 
converted Rousillon wines lying ready for shipment to 
England and various northern countries, as vintage port." 

Mr. Shaw, in his Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar 
(London, 1863), relates this illustrative anecdote, told by 
Lord Palmerston to a deputation waiting upon him : — 

" I remember my grandfather. Lord Pembroke, when 
he placed wine before his guests, said, ' There, gentlemen, 
is my champagne, my claret, etc. I am no great judge, 
and I give you these on the authority of my wine merchant ; 
but I can answer for my port, for I made it myself.' " 

Mr. Yizetelly (op. cit.) says about sherry : " The wine Sheny 
which forms the bulk of the better class of sherries tiins.^^'^' 
imported into England is of the third quality, and is 
known as raya. In its natural state it is sound and dry, 
of a pale greenish yellow colour, and has no particular 
character. Much of the low- class sherry shipped from 
Cadiz is blended, moreover, with poor white wine from the 
Contado de JSTiebla. When the wine is designed for ship- 
ment, it is sweetened and flavoured to disguise its 
deficiencies of taste, and coloured in order that it may be 
palmed off as old and matured — colouring matter and 
reddish-brown liquid strongly charged with sulphate of 
potash — then to prevent fresh fermentation, proof spirits 
are added." 

Mr. Walter Burton, late of Her Majesty's Customs, 
asserts that of many thousand tests which he had made at , 
the London Customs House, the average showed 37 per 
cent, of proof spirit, while some exhibited as much as 
50 pre cent. 



50 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Mr, James Denman, in Ms pampUet, Wine as it should 
he (London, 1866), cites the following significant advertise-, 
ment from a prominent London morning journal, Septem- 
ber 29tli, 1866 :— 

" Partner Wanted. — A practical distiller, having been 
experimenting for the last seventeen years, can now produce 
a fair port and sherry by fermentation, without a drop of 
grape juice, and wishes a party with from £2000 to 
£3000 capital, to establish a house in Hamburg for the 
manufacture of his wines. Has already a good connection 
in business." 

And a writer on Wine and the Wine Trade in the 
Edinburgh Review (July, 1867) says — 

" All the refuse wine, red or white, old samples, heeltaps 
of bottles, half-tasted glasses, are thrown down and passed 
away into the collecting barrel — just as the cook throws 
any kind of meat and soup liquor into his stock-pot — and 
with the addition of a little spirit and colouring matter, it 
comes out very good eighteen-shilling port. Mr. Shaw has 
shown us how ' curious old brown sherry ' * is made already 
by the aid of ' the doctor.' " 

Times' leader In a leading article in the Times (December 10th, 1873) 

msj on' we read : — 

adul7 ti " "^^® correspondence which we have lately published 

on the manufacture of the liquid sold in this country under 
the name of ' Sherry,' seems calculated to shake even the 
robust faith of the British householder in the merits of his 
favourite beverage. The correspondence had its origin in 
the fate of an unfortunate gentleman who was found, by 
the verdict of a coroner's jury, to have died from an over- 
dose of alcohol, taken in four gills of sherry ; and, as it 
' proceeded, it gradually unfolded some of the mysteries of 
the processes by which the product called sherry is obtained. 
In the first place, it seems that the grapes, before being 
trodden and pressed, are dusted over with a large quantity 
of plaster of Paris (sulphate of lime), an addition which 
removes the tartaric and malic acids from the juice, and 
leaves sulphuric acid in their stead, so that the ' must ' 
contains none of the bitartrate of potash which is the 
natural salt of wine, but sulphate of potash instead, usually 

* At present termed by publicans tbe drink of all nations, and 
not limited to wines by any means. 



ADULTERATIONS. 51 

in the proportion of about two ounces to a gallon. Besides 
thiSj the common varieties of ' must ' receive an additional 
pound of sulphuric acid to each butt, by being impregnated 
with the fumes of five ounces of sulphur. When fermenta- 
tion is complete, the wine may contain from a minimum of 
about 14, to a maximum of 27'5 per cent, of proof spirit ; 
but it is not yet in a state to satisfy the demands of the 
English market, neither can it be trusted to travel without 
undergoing secondary fermentation or other changes. It 
is therefore treated with a variety of ingredients to impart 
colour, sweetness, and flavour ; and it receives an addition 
of sufficient brandy to raise the alcoholic strength of the 
mixture to 35 per cent, as a minimum, or in some cases 
to as much as 59 per cent, of proof spirit. When all this 
has been done, it is shipped in the wood for England, 
where it is either bottled as ' pure ' wine, or is subjected 
to such further sophistications as the ingenuity of dealers 
may suggest. 

" Surely it would not exceed the duty of a Government 
which has done so much to protect the population from 
disease, by enforcing sanitary regulations — drainage, house- 
cleaning, etc. — to interfere vigorously and repress this 
abominable traffic." 

§20. All wines intended for export are "/or2^^/ie(^" — that 
is, alcoholized — on the pretext that only by this method can 
they be prevented from souring, a questionable statement 
when asserted of any well-made and matured wine. It is, 
however, accepted as a truth by the various European 
Grovernments, and naturally the cheapest stuff that will 
answer the purpose is used in this fortification. 

Mr. Yizetelly says, " It is notorious that Spaniards are 
not dram-drinkers, yet for a long time Spain imported 
annually some 1,600,000 gallons of British spirits. 

" It is true that it does so no longer, but simply because 
Prussia, where it markets to-day, furnishes it with a 
cheaper article distilled from potatoes and beetroot. It is 
notorious, moreover, that spirit of the same low class is 
extensively used in England to fortify port wine in bond. 
The Custom returns give the total number of ' operations,' 
as fortifying of wine in the docks is delicately termed, at 
820 for the year 1872." 

The Daily Telegraph (September 12, 1883), in a leader ^^^\lf^-^^ 



52 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

(Sept. 12, on the political relations between Germany and Spain, 

1883) on sa,YS 

Spanish wine -^ <-,,.... 

manufac- " Not Only does Spain in politics approach Germany; 

raw German ^^ their commercial negotiations her statesmen have made 

spirits. many concessions to Prince Bismarck. The Peninsula 

furnishes a kind of medium between the raw alcohol of 

Germany and the palates of the wine- drinkers of the 

world. Spain imports vast quantities of spirits from the 

North, mixes them with her own wines, exports them as 

genuine products of her soil to Prance, where, stamped 

with the names of famous localities or firms, they, like the 

Tricolor, make the tour of the world. This French demand 

for Spanish wines so steadily increases, owing to the 

ravages of the phylloxera, that out of the produce of her 

own soil Spain could not possibly meet the demand. Hence 

the commercial importance of her friendship for Germany." 

This information as to the character of Spanish wines 

reads curiously side by side with the statements, in the 

London morning papers (December 7, 1883), that England 

is about to conclude a commercial treaty with Spain, the 

nature of which can be judged from these innocent 

The Daily comments of the Daily News^ Madrid correspondent : 

SesJ^n"^-""^ "Even the most extreme pretensions of the Spanish 

dent on the wine-gTowers only aimed at getting thirty-two or thirty- 

wSadui- fo^^ degrees for the ultimate limit of the one shilling duty 

teration {^ ^ definitive treaty some day, and that limit would 

Spain, include fortified wines as well as natural." Thus not 

only are there to be special facilities for importing, 

and poisoning the English with vile German whisky 

flavoured with Spanish wines ; but apparently a premium 

is to be offered to Spain for declining the less vile but 

costlier British spirits for German, which, excepting 

under the guise of Spanish wines, would not be drunk in 

this country ! 

Ex-Custom It was but a few years ago that the ex- Custom officer, 

B^rton^* ^^- Walter Burton, drew public attention to the fortifying 

expose of _ of wines ill the Custom wine-houses and under the actual 

from'rlw*"^ superintendence of Government officials. 

potato spirit "A wine-jobber," he remarks, "having, say, 1000 

docks, under gallons of winc. Can add thereto 100 gallons of spirit, 

superviSoa* ^^^king a total of 1100 gallons of wine, thereby converting 

in a few minutes 200 gallons of crude potato spirit diluted 



ADULTERATIONS. 53 

with London water, and costing about one shilling per 
gallon, into, it may be, a ' special sherry ' or ' vintage port.' 
There is, as far as I am aware, no record kept of the 
quantity of spirit so turned into wine ; but seeing that a 
large staff of officers are continuously employed in super- 
intending such operations, the increase to our stock in 
wines from this source must be considerable. It is for the 
public to say whether this system of manufacturing wine 
at their expense is to be continued. It is bad enough to 
have flavoured spirit and water imported into this country 
under the guise of wine, but it is still more objectionable 
to pay public officers to legalize the manufacture of such 
compounds in our own docks and warehouses to the 
manifest injury of the revenue and of the public health." 
Such sherry is what is had "at taverns and refreshment 
bars at public dinners, and which figures on the wine list 
of the majority of hotels at six shillings the bottle." 

The Licensed Victualler s Simple Guide (London, 1878), Wine rectm- 
under head of Fortifying says, " It frequently happens premred*'^ 
that wines left in the docks a long time become what is chalk 
termed 'pricked' (a tendency to acidity). Indeed, they ^eSSdas' 
often reach England in such condition ; in this case it is late as isrs. 
well to have them racked on to spirit. Any merchant or 
agent can superintend the operation. When port is 
absolutely sour, it is good to drop a pound of prepared 
chalk into the pipe, and allow it. to remain three days; 
then fine with eggs, and, when bright, rack off with the 
highest proportion of spirits allowed by the Customs. This 
process leaves a little flatness, but is a frequent restorative, 
and renders the wine useful, at any rate for blending 
purposes." 

§ 21. Dr. Brinton, in his work on Food and its Digestion 
(London, 1861), says, " The addition of brandy to wine is, 
of course, a rank adulteration." 

Dr. McCulloch, in his Art of Making Wine, observes 
that "the admixture of alcohol decomposes the wine." 

Dr. Garrod, in his System of Medicine, writing on the 
causes of gout, says, " The wines to be carefully avoided are 
port, sherry, madeira, and any in which the fermentation 
has been checked by the addition of alcohol." 

The writer of the article on Wine and the Wine Trade The per- 
(Edinhurgh Beview, July, 1867), a ^rojpos of these legalized "^^^^^^^ 



54 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



practice 
of hetero- 
gen-'ous 
mixture of 
wines in the 
wine trade. 



Various ills 
caused by 
drinking 
adulterated 
wines. 



adulterations, says, "It is, we think, very questionable 
whether wines of different vintages, but of the same, 
country, should be mixed at all, as is now universally done 
in bond for home consumption. Chemically, they cannot 
perfectly agree ; and in order to keep the peace among 
them more, alcohol is poured in to pay the constable. But 
there can be no question whatever of the atrocity of 
pouring all kinds of wine, white and red, of all countries 
and all ages, sweet and sour and bitter, into vats, as is 
now done in the docks, adding spirit to thera to keep them 
from perishing, as they do with preparations in our 
museums, and then exporting them to other countries. 
But do they always go to other countries ? The evidence 
of the authorities of the Customs at the docks tells a very 
different tale. Mr. Cole, Comptroller of the Customs in 
the London Docks, among numerous other examples of 
heterogeneous mixtures of wines vatted in these docks, 
gives us the following, dated October 16, 1850 : — 

" ' Spanish wine, 1529 gallons ; of Fayal wine, 544 
gallons ; of French wines, 4492 gallons ; of Cape wines, 
689 gallons ; of Portugal wine, only 117 gallons, with 
155 gallons of brandy, the result obtained being 7524 
gallons, minus 8 gallons loss; and the grand result is 
7533 gallons of port wine.' " 

And the celebrated physician and chemist. Dr. Bergeron, 
of Paris, says that alcoholization of wine introduces in 
wine a proportion of alcohol which, not being intimately 
associated with the other principles of the " must " in the 
labour of fermentation, finds itself there in a kind of free 
state, and acts with the same suddenness and energy on 
the organism as diluted alcohol. 

As to champagnes, Wetherbee says, in his Toxicology, 
that a "portion of so-called champagne wines is composed 
of the expressed juice of turnips, apples, and other 
vegetables, to which sufficient sugar of lead is added to 
produce the necessary sweetness and astringency." The 
Wine Guide (London, 1874) counsels wine merchants to 
clear cloudy and musty wines with sugar of lead, and Dr. 
Orfila, in his work on Poisons (Paris, 1852), says, " Of all 
the frauds this is the most dangerous. Sugar of lead 
gives a sweet, astringent, metallic taste, constriction of the 
throat, pain in the stomach, vomiting, fetid eructation, 



ADULTERATIONS. 55 

thirst, coldness of limbs, convulsions, delirium, etc." This, 
then, is the explanation of the terrible splitting headaches 
after fashionable champagne suppers. 

Dr. Baer states that in the adulteration of wines the 
colouring matters play a deadly part. " N'ot only light 
wines, but mixtures, in which there has never been any 
grape juice, are artificially dyed and brought into the trade 
as precious red wines. To this end vegetable dyes are 
used, such as mallow-bloom, whortleberries, elderberries, 
cochineal, and logwood . . . and in modern times the 
aniline dye fuchsia, especially dangerous because of the 
arsenic it contains. Yery serious symptoms have followed 
a few days' use of this — albuminuria, colic, emaciation, etc. 
. . . Certain processes resorted to in wine cooperage are 
very unhealthy . . . alkalies — carbonate of lime and quick- 
lime are added to fix the superfluous acids, and plaster of 
Paris to heighten the colour and increase its power of 
keeping. In the sulphurating of the wine casks, when the 
sulphur is from arsenic, this poison also may gain access 
to the wine." 

§ 22. At the close of his work on Wines (London, 1880), Beeraduiter- 
Mr. Vizetelly devotes some attention to beer, and says that 
" the popular notion that the intoxicating influence of 
English beer is due exclusively to its alcoholic strength is 
an erroneous one, for there are many beers containiog only 
a very small quantity of alcohol, that are highly stupefying, 
most likely due to the use of cocculus indicus." 

Of course the chief adulterations used for beers are 
water and salt. To conceal the water dilution, and as 
substitutes for hops, a number of bitter stuffs are used. 
Picric acid, aloes, quassia, buckbean, cocculus indicus, 
and gentian supply the taste of hops ; phosphoric acid 
the hop aroma ; and for the headings or froths, concoc- 
tions of alum, copperas, sweet wort, molasses, and cocculus 
indicus are used. As a substitute for alcohol, the cocculus 
indicus berry, which in its poisonous power surpasses 
prussic acid, is being imported in steadily increasing 
quantities into England. A querist in the Pharmaceutical 
Journal (for 1874) pointed out that " the stocks for a 
previous month had been 1066 bags," and asked, " Is there 
any legitimate use for the same ? " The Lancet declared 
not, and had " no hesitation in affirming that a very large 



ation. 



56 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

portion of it is put into malt liqnor to give it strengtli and 
headiness. A viler agent could not well be introduced, 
into beer than the berry, the stupefying effects of whicb 
are so well known that it is frequently used to kill fish and 
birds." 

As substitutes for malt and sugar, unmalted grain, 
ryes, maize starch, syrups, and glycerine are used. To 
give age, or rectify staleness, oil of vitriol and sulphuric 
acids are chiefly used. Sulphate of iron is the ingredient 
which gives it the metallic bitter taste so loved by beer- 
drinkers. Lime and lead composites are employed to 
neutralize the action of the acids. 
The narcotic Another intoxicant, though generally regarded as non- 
fupuut. alcoholic, is the lupulit, an extract from the hop-flower 

gland. It contains ethereal oils, tannic acid, bitter stuffs, 
resin, etc., and the narcotic effect is chiefly due to the 
resinous part. 



CHAPTER Y. 

PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS ; OR, EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON THE 
PHYSICAL ORGANS AND FUNCTIONS. 

" Delight not in meats and drinks that are too strong for Nature? 
but always let Nature be stronger than your food. 

"Let your food be simple, and drinks innocent, and learn of 
wisdom and experience how to prepare them aright." — Aphorisms 
25 and 32. Tryon. 1691. 

" Two lives go to make up the life of a nation. There is, first of 
all, the individual life, and then the collective life of the individuals, 
which makes what we call ' the life of the nation ; ' but if I may be 
forgiven for saying so, far before the life of a nation is the life of 
every individual soul who forms a part of it — and if the question of 
the proper use of alcoholic drinks is important for our welfare as a 
nation, surely in a much stronger sense it is important for us, as 
individual souls, fraught with all the business of eternity upon our 
backs, to determine what is the right use of alcohol. Now, if this 
question is important in this twofold aspect, what a solemn sense of 
responsibility must be upon the shoulders of those who come forward 
to speak about it, and especially upon the shoulders of those who 
come forward and speak about it with authority ! Two things, as it 
seems to me, are necessary : one is, that he who presumes to speak 
authoritatively upon this subject shall know it ; and the next is that, 
however dear a certain side of the question may be to him, he should 
speak about it not with the mere desire to succeed, not with the 
desire of triumph, but with a loving, reverent, solemn desire to state 
the truth about it, and nothing but the truth." — An Enemy of the 
Race, Lecture by Sir Andrew Clark, London. 

" When I think of the terrible effects of the abuse of alcohol, I 
am disposed to give up my profession, to give up everything, and go 
•forth upon a holy crusade, preaching to all men — Beware of this 
enemy of the race ! " — Alcohol in Small Doses, Lecture by Sir Andrew 
Clark, London. 

§ 23. The greatest physiologists are agreed that the proper Dr. l. Her- 
length of life allotted to man cannot be known. Dr. L. ofhuman^* 

life-limit. 



58 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Alcohol a 
chief agent 
in abbre- 
viating life. 



Dr. J. R. 

Farre's 
opinion on 
the same 
point. 



Professor 
Flourens' 
epigram. 



Hermann, of Znricli, in tlie recent edition of his Physiology 
(Berlin, 1882), says, "For all animal life there exists a 
tolerably certain life-limit, so that we must regard the ex- 
tinction of function as a normal process ; but as to man 
the typical life-limit is not definable because of the many 
harmful conditions that accompany civilization." 

The present average age of man is not over fifty years, 
while, according to the Old Testament, from two hundred 
to six hundred years was once not an extraordinary life- 
limit, and both marriages and child-births after one hundred 
years of age are recorded among the ancient people of Grod. 
The question raised at this point by reference to such 
records as these, is of course not one of faith or doctrine ; 
but one of rational inference that an average longevity 
greater than any reached in our day, or within modern 
history, was the probable basis of such statements. 
Herodotus (Book III. chap, vi.) says of the Macrobians 
(Ethiopians) in the time of Cambyses, that they were re- 
markable " for their beauty and their massive proportions 
of body, in both of which they surpassed all other men 
. . . they lived to be a hundred and twenty years old, and 
some to a longer period, and yet they fed on roasted meat 
and used milk for their drink." 

Dr. John Bichard Farre, when examined before the 
Parliamentary Committee appointed in 1834 to inquire 
into the cause and extent of drunkenness, gave it as his 
opinion, based on the evidences of revelation and both 
sacred and profane history, that " by the last grant of 
Providence to man, his life is one hundred and twenty 
years," and that where diseases arising from other causes 
do not shorten it, the reason why so few attain that age is 
to be found in the use of drink, in which the masses of the 
community continually indulge. He instanced the deaths 
of Pitt and Fox as due to the use of alcohol, by which they 
sought to supplement energies already too exhaustingly 
taxed. 

Professor P. Flourens, of the College de France, in his 
work on Human Longevity (Paris, 1854), considers one 
hundred years to be the normal length of man's life. 
" Few men, indeed," he says, "reach that age, but how 
many do what is necessary to reach it ? With our way of 
living, our passions and worries, man no longer dieSy hut 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 59 

^2-7^5 himself / ^^ To prolobg life, that is, to make it last as 
long as tlie constitution indicates that it should, there is 
a means and a very certain means, and. that is to live 
soberly." 

And within the present short limit of life what an Man's re- 
infinite amount of disease, and of disease-aborted powers, inTSs ^ ^ ^ 
we find bound up ; for as deliberately as he kills himself, matter. 
does man poison and thwart himself during the period 
which nature is able to eke out. 

Even now individual cases occur of life-limit reaching 
and exceeding one hundred years, as in the year 1881 deaths 
were recorded in England of some ninety-one persons of one 
hundred years and upwards, the oldest one hundred and 
twelve. But this fact points only to general possibilities, 
and it is my purpose here to show that science and obser- 
vation have furnished proof that the chief enemy of the 
longevity and health of the race is alcohol. 

The main cause is ignorance — I mean the pernicious ignorance 
ignorance which knows a thing in a general sense, without cause of the 
acting upon this knowledge in a particular sense, and J)revityof 
thereby developing both knowledge and practice into a 
true science of living, in our own individual behalf and 
for others. 

We are here concerned with this form of ignorance in 
regard to the general physical laws of the construction of 
the body and the maintenance of. its health,* and with 

* Every man knows that his physical body is his means for being 
and doing. He knows that to this end he must respect, care for — 
yes, revere his body. And the inherent law of self-defence and 
self-preservation — by ignorance so often sadly perverted into self- 
destruction — seeks to teach this fact. 

Nobody, when the matter is brought plainly before him, will 
hesitate to admit that he ought to live in such a manner that all his 
faculties, capacities, and powers should receive the best development 
and activity ; but in practice this truism is almost unknown. And 
with our social life and institutions, only an exceedingly small pro- 
portion of mankind, even with the best intention in the world, could 
approximately reach this ideal. Sufl&cient and agreeable rest, enough 
of undisturbed sleep, congenial and healthy occupations, sufficient 
amount and variety of healthy foods, fresh and pure air and water, 
healthy dwellings, these are all essential for bodily vigour and health ; 
but to how many of the toiling millions who labour for bread, either 
by muscle or brain, are these essentials vouchsafed ? 

On the other hand, how many of those so-called fortunate ones, 



60 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

especial reference to tlie use of alcohol, wMcli but for this 
ignorance would not liave continued to this date an^ 
ingredient in our beverages. 
The inherent § 24. Before Considering definite theories as to what 
manSfested alcohol does and becomes after it enters the living organism, 
in^organic it is well that the starting-point of thought should be that 
of the marvellous — apparently mechanical — wisdom in- 
herent in organic life, which makes all portions of our 
being unite with unanimity and harmony to utilize that 
which is useful, to reduce and reject that which is not; 
and by which the body, previous to disease, signifies un- 
mistakably its approval or disapproval of the treatment it 
receives — as, for instance, in hunger or thirst, its intima- 
tions are imperative, irresistible, and can be silenced only 
by obedience or death. 

It is essential, also, to bear in mind that this very 
power enables the body — like the mind — to adapt itself to 
such gradual derangement and degradation of the great 
mass of its minor requirements as produce imperfect con- 
ditions, which by habit become chronic or second nature. 
The chemical § 25. Chemical analysis has demonstrated that the 
SeTuman^ human body contains from fifteen to seventeen chemical 
body. elements : — Carbon, 13'5 ; hydrogen, 9*6 ; nitrogen, 2"5 ; 

oxygen, 72'0 ; phosphorus, 1*15; calcium (metallic), 1'3; 
with minute quantities of sulphur and iron. These 
elements form the various organic compounds which make 
up the body, but as all of them are extremely unstable * in 

who could command all these blessings, are wise enough to value 
them more than the satisfaction of loose desires, sensations, and 

passions ? 

* " The animal organic compounds are characterized by their 
• complexity, for in the first place many elements enter into their 
composition. . . . Again, many atoms of the same element occur in 
each molecule. This latter fact no doubt explains the reason of the 
instahility of organic compounds, as many of them are unsaturated 
todies, or, in other words, bodies containing atoms which are not 
satisfied according to chemical law by combination with equivalent 
atoms of other elements. . . . Another great cause of the instability 
arises from the fact that many organic compounds contain the 
element nitrogen, which may be called negative or undecided in its 
afiinities, and may be easily separated from its combination with 
other elements. From the foregoing it is evident that animal tissues, 
containing as they do these organic nitrogenous compounds, are 
extremely prone to undergo chemical decomposition, and this is 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 61 

their character — life and tealtli necessitating tlieir constant 
change, dissolution, and elimination — the body requires 
constantly a re-supply of renovating materials which are 
broadly called food. Whatever, therefore, contains any of in what food 
the above-mentioned elements in a form chemically soluble ^^"^^^^ ^• 
and assimilable by the body, is in that proportion a food. 

By "food," therefore, is meant any substance, in solid, Definition of 
liquid, or gaseous form, which, when taken internally, ^^°<^- 
supplies some needed substance or force ; in a word, any- 
thing which, taken internally, supplies with innocency to 
the tissues any requii^ement of the body, is food. 

Besides fresh air and pure water, the body needs con- 
stant supply of tissue and force- supplying foods. Foods, 
without exception, have their origin in the constructive 
action of plant life. Sometimes we take the materials 
directly from the vegetable kingdom, and sometimes from 
the flesh of animals who have subjected the coarser vege- 
table products to a preliminary digestion. Latent energy, 
in the complex organic substances known as food, is thrown 
out upon their decomposition into simpler forms of 
material. Upon the amount of the force thus released, 
and upon the decomposability of the organic compound, 
depends the food value — innocency in relation to the body 
being assumed. 



Foods may be broadly divided into three classes : — Division of 

First, Regular foods — such alimentary materials as are [j°gg ^^^^ 
usually considered food. classes- 

Second, Gondimentary foods — those which please the cofdimen- 
palate and smell, including spices and sauces. These t^ry, Suppie- 
should be used with great discretion, in order that the anTiS 
appetite may not be vitiated. ^^"^^^^ fo*^^^- 

Third, Supplementary and Incidental foods — foods 
suited to irregular conditions, to diseases, etc.; such as 
some medicines, certain substances which in particular 
states of health are useful to expel poisons or impurities, 
to remove obstructions, repair damages, etc. 

Generally, however, only such substances as properly Division of 

the Regnjar 
especially the case since they also contain a large quantity of water, *^°'^*^^- 
a condition most favourable for the breaking up of complicated com- 
pounds." — W. Morrant Baker's Handbook of Physiology. London, 
1880. 



62 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The process 
of nutrition. 



The nature 
and twofold 
mission of 
the blood. 



The consti- 
tuent parts 
of blood. 



Water the 



belong to tlie first class are commonly accepted as foods. 
These have been divided into many groups, but tbe only 
accurate division is tbe chemical one, viz., the nitrogenous 
and tbe non-nitrogenous : tbe nitrogenous,* such, as 
albumen (the wbite of an egg, vegetable albumen in 
cereals and in the juices of plants ; fibrine, tbe coagulating 
ingredient in blood, and the gluten in cereals, etc.) ; and the 
non-nitrogenous, divided in two groups, viz., the fats or 
hydro-carbons, and starch and sugar or the carbo- 
hydrates. 

The change of foods f into tissue and the releasing of 
its energy is a series of intricate processes. After being 
mingled with the saliva, the food enters the stomach, where 
it is thoroughly mixed with the gastric juice, and as soon 
as any portions are fit for blood-making, they are drawn 
into the blood, while the residual matters are carried off 
through the intestines. 



§ 26. Blood is tissue in solution (that is, food prepared 
for renewal of tissue, and food which, having been used in 
tissue-making, has become waste), and in its coursing 
through all the parts of the body it fulfils the double 
mission of feeding and of scavenging the tissues. 

The blood consists chiefly of two compounds — the 
blood-plasma or serum, a colourless fluid, in which the 
blood-corpuscles float ; and the blood-corpuscles themselves, 
which contain the colouring matter. 

The principal function of the corpuscles seems to be 
to carry backwards and forwards between the lungs and 
tissues, the oxygen which they require and the carbonic 
acid which they give out. Upon the sufficiency, healthful- 
ness, and normal circulation of the blood, therefore, the 
health and the life of the individual depend. 

But although foods are vitally important for the 

* It is a curious fact that although the bulk of the atmosphere 
consists of no less than 75 per cent, of nitrogen, still the living body 
is unable to obtain any of it direct from the atmosphere ; and as 
nitrogen is an element that does not exist in all foods, it has been 
found convenient to divide foods into the two classes here mentioned. 

t The harder the mental or physical labour, the more easy of 
digestion should the foods be, their mastication should be the more 
thorough, and after eating the digestive process should be further 
assisted by rest. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 



63 



support of life, water is even more important. Water is 
the medium or vehicle in which all the chemical changes of 
the body are performed, and in this sense it is an essential 
auxiliary to the food-materials of the body. Dr. W. B. 
Carpenter, in his prize essay On the Use and Abuse of 
Alcoholic Liquors in Health and Disease (London, 1849), 
says, " It is through the medium of the water contained in 
the animal body that all its vital functions are carried on. 
IS'o other liquid than water can act as the solvent for the 
various articles of food which are taken into the stomach. 
It is water alone which forms all the fluid portion of the 
blood, and thus serves to convey the nutritive material 
through the capillary pores into the substance of the solid 
tissues. It is water, which, when mingled in various pro- 
portions with the solid components of the various textures, 
gives to them the consistence which they severally require. 
And it is water, which takes up the products of their 
decay, and by the most complicated and wonderful system 
of sewerage, conveys them out of the system." Dr. Austin 
Flint, in his Physiology of Man (New York, 1866), says, 
concerning water, that it "is by far the most important 
of the inorganic principles. It is present at all periods of 
life, existing even in the ovum. It exists in all parts of 
the body ; in the fluids — some of which, as the lachrymal 
fluid and perspiration, contain little else — and in the 
hardest structures, as the bones or the enamel of the teeth." 
He supplies the following table of Quantity of Water in the 
various parts of the body — parts per thousand : — 



paramount 
need of the 
system. 



Dr. W. B. 

Carpenter 
on the 
paramount 
importance 
of v/ater to 
life. 



Dr. Austin 
Flint on the 



Teeth 


100 


Chyle of man ... 


.. 904 


Bones 


130 


Bile 


.. 905 


Tendons 


500 


Urine 


.. 933 


Articular cartilages 


550 


Human lymph . . . 


.. 960 


Skin 


575 


Human saliva ... 


.. 983 


Liver 


618 


Gastric juice 


.. 984 


Muscles of man 


725 


Perspiration 


.. 986 


Ligaments 


768 


Tears 


.. 990 


Mean of blood 


780 


Pulmonary vapour 


.. 997 


Milk of human female ... 


887 







Of the Functions of Water, he says — " As a constituent 
of organized tissue, it gives to cartilage its elasticity, to 
tendons their pliability and toughness ; it is necessary to 
the peculiar power and resistance of the bones, . . . and to 



64 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

the proper consistence of all parts of the body. It has 
other important functions as a solvent. Soluble articles, 
of food are introduced in solution in water. The ex- 
crementitious matters, which are generally soluble in water, 
are dissolved by it in the blood, carried to the organs of 
excretion, and discharged in a watery solution from the 
body." 
Drs. Bee- The French physicians, Becquerel and Rodier, in their 

RoSeron treatise, Pathological Chemistry as applied to Medical 
the proper- Practice (Paris, 1854), state, as to the constitution of the 
ill blood. blood, that it consists of — ■ 

Water ... ... ... ... ... 781-600 

Globules ... ... ... ... 135-000 

Albumen ... ... ... ... ... 70-000 

Fibrine ... ... ... ... 2-500 

Chlorides of sodium, potassium, magnesium, etc. , . . 3*500 

Dr. Aibin And the Danish physician. Dr. Albin Koch, states that 
Koch on the ^^ dividing the blood into 1000 parts we find that it 

consists of 789 parts of water, 131 of blood-corpuscles, 

71 parts albumen, and the remainder are salts, fats, etc. 
Water, therefore, is the overwhelming need of the 

system, as the sufferings from excessive thirst prove ; 

death by thirst is more rapid and distressing than by 

starvation. 
Definition of § 27. As by food is meant anything which feeds tissue 

poison. ^^ replenishes force, with innocency to the organism, so by 

poison is meant anything which, when taken into the body, 

does harm to it. 
Division of Poisons may be divided into two groups — Absolute 

uvogroups— poisons, or such as are always hurtful or useless, and 
Absolute and Incidental poisons, such as are determined in their ill or 
poisons. good effect by the condition of the body ; and these may 

be interchangeable with the second and third groups of 

foods, according to the condition of the person taking 

them. 

Even the regular foods may at times act as poisons, 

and the absolute poisons act as foods, but such occasions 

are rare. 

Any substance not a food, if used as a food, acts as a 

poison. 

§ 28. Tor an authoritative answer to the question 

whether alcohol is a food or a poison, we look naturally 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 65 

to the physician ; but, unfortunately, the most renowned 
physicians differ in their opinions on the subject. 

Although for upwards of four centuries warning voices 
have from time to time been raised against the use of 
alcoholic drinks, it is only within the memory of the 
still living that these voices have been listened to in 
earnest. 

During the last thirty years — that is, since the establish- 
ment of a scientific system of physiology — scientists have 
laboured most indefatigably to find out what are the effects 
of alcohol. Some light has been gained, but only a very 
few points have been accepted as proven. Hundreds of 
able medical authorities have devoted much time and care 
to v^atching the phenomena of drink, and the records of 
these endeavours are a proad memorial to the sincerity and 
earnestness of the medical profession. 

, The most eminent members of the medical profession The present 
have made public the apparently irreconcilable results of physicians 
their varied experiments. Others, seeing only the un- on the 
certainty and confusion on the subject, have eluded the the use of 
difficulty by declaring the outcry against alcohol to be ^^"^o^oi- 
nonsense, and by affirming that while many perish from 
excessive drinking, those who drink moderately are 
benefited, and that if it is not indispensable for the preser- 
vation of health, it is of great importance to it. A still 
greater number — the rank and file of medical men — yet 
hold that alcohol is always bad for young people, bat that 
for healthy adults, when taken in very small quantities, 
one to two ounces daily, it is, if not beneficial, at least harm- 
less. A few remain neutral as to its effects ; and a few 
take a decided stand against its use as a drink, and differ 
widely in almost every instance as to its use and value 
medicinally. 

We mast, therefore, try, by a collection and careful 
analysis of comparisons and deductions, to arrive at the 
result. 

First, as regards alcohol itself. We saw in chapter iii. The impor- 
how important a role the recently discovered world of played by 
microscopic animals and plants, called ferments, play in. the gcop^'worid 
economy of both life and death ; how it is through the in the visible 
activity of these minute creations that both animals and '^*^^^*^' 



66 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

people are swept away by wliat are termed infectious 
diseases : for example, the rinderpest and pleuro-pnenmonia 
among cattle ; the plague, yellow fever, and cholera among 
m.en. That, on the other hand, but for the activity of 
other kinds of these invisible forces, life would be impos- 
sible ; that it is by means of the diastatic ferments * that 
digestion becomes possible ; by means of this activity in- 
soluble albumen becomes soluble (peptone) ; starch and 
some cellulose are changed into dextrine or grape sugar; 
fats are split up ; and cane sugar, which is insoluble in 
protoplasm, becomes soluble glucose. (These minute 
organisms, moreover, are the scavengers of nature.) 
especially in And WO saw that alcohol, which is obtained from the 
a[a)hoi.°^ saccharine matters of grapes, cereals, potatoes, beets, etc. — 
that is, from the principal carbo-hydrates — is also the 
product of digestive or diastatic ferments (ferments that 
feed on the albuminous accompaniments of saccharine 
substances), such as those through whose activity starch 
and cellalose become grape sugar, and cane sugar becomes 
glucose. 

Is alcohol a Can alcohol be called a food on the ground that it 

supplies tissue ? I have already pointed out that the 

nutritive powers of foods depended on the proportion in 

which they held compounds of elements which could be 

made available for the renovation of the body; and 

Alcohol is (chap, iii.) that hitherto alcohol has not been found in 

the living '° the living organism, except in the wastes and refuse, and 

organism, even in these only in infinitesimal traces, so loth is the 

occasional body to hai'bour alcohol. 

refuse ^^*^^ But if science should succeed in discovering traces of 
' alcohol in living tissue, it would be at most only in such 
infinitesimal quantities as those of copper and lead ; and 
surely no one, because copper and lead had been traced 
in the body, would suggest that we should supply ourselves 
with these compounds by the use of salts of copper and 
lead as foods ! 

* To these ferments belong the so-called ptyalin found in i^e 
saliva, the ferments in the pancreatic juice which change starch into 
soluble glucose, alr^o the ferments ot" the liver which act on the 
glycogen ; other ferments change cane and milk sugar into glucose. 
The hydrolytic or unknown processes of life are supposed to be due 
to the activity of various ferments. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 67 

Dr. A. Baer, of Berlin, in his treatise on Drink Graving Dr. a. Baer 
(1881), states that " alcohol contains neither albumen, nor ffc^ohoHs** 
fat, nor any other snbstance either present in the animal food, 
organism or arising by chemical changes in the body and 
replacing a part of the same." 

We see everywhere around ns, thanks to the progress 
of the temperance reform, people sound in mind and body, 
who never tonch alcohol. The following very practical Dr. Klein's 
testimony to the uselessness of alcohol as a food I find in the worth- ° 
Dr. L. A. Klein's * lecture f on the effects of the use of ^icohofas^ 
alcohol during the siege of Paris : — food. 

" It was just the time when the wine-merchants are 
used to buy their stock for the year when the war broke 
out, so we had plenty of wines of every description. It 
was distributed by the Government very liberally indeed. 

"We drank because we had nothing to eat. We found 
most decidedly that alcohol was no substitute for bread 
and meat. We also found that it was not a substitute for 
coals. You know how cold the weather was during the 
winter. We of the army had to sleep outside Paris on 
the frozen ground, and in the snow, and when we got up 
in the morning we were as stiff as planks. We had plenty 
of alcohol, but it did not make us warm. We thus found 
out by bitter experience that alcohol did not make us warm, 
did not replace food of any kind, and did not replace coals. 
Let me tell you there is nothing that will make you feel 
the cold more, nothing which will make you feel the 
dreadful sense of hunger more, tban alcohol." 



But though the conclusion is clear that alcohol is not Reasons for 
food, there are reasons for the general belief that it is ; Jhat"aicohoi 
such, for example, as the outward appearances attending is food, 
its use, the heightened colour, the temporarily increased 
vivacity of mind and manner and surface temperature, the 
lessened requirement of regular foods ; all which seems to 
indicate that alcohol does, in some kind and degree, feed 
the system. It is also claimed that alcohol has in critical 
cases saved life that must else have been inevitably lost ; % 

* French staff-sTargeon. 

t See Medical Temperance Journal, October, 1873. 
X There have been cases in which alcohol has been said to have 
supported life. But it also appears to have been proved that life has 



is THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

and when to this is added the scientific testimony that 
alcohol is a product of the chief carbo-hydrate, sugar— 
which is known to be one of the most important foods of 
the body — it is not strange that alcohol should have come 
to be generally regarded a food. The validity of all these 
reasons for such belief will be examined in due order 
when the particular results to the body from the use of 
alcohol come under consideration. 
Alcohol tried ^ 29. Here let us try alcohol by some of the general 

by the tests , ,^ £ p j "^ *^ ° 

of foods. tests 01 loods. 

1. The regular foods are essential to life. It is 
positively proved that alcohol is not essential either to 
life or health. 

2. The periodic need felt for regular foods ceases each 
time after being moderately supplied ; even the momen- 
tarily importunate craving (caused by some special want) 
when abundantly satisfied also ceases, or, if satiated or 
persistently denied, may even change to aversion. — With 
alcohol, the craving, if steadfastly denied, will gradually 
cease ; but if satisfied, it begets abnormal craving, and that 
craving, having once taken hold, becomes the most in- 
satiable of human passions. As Linnseus said, " Man sinks 
gradually by this fell poison ; first he favours it, then warms 
to it, then burns for it, then is consumed by it."* 

3. Regular foods, when taken in their proper ratio, are 
easy of digestion, and give the system a calm increase 
of vigour. — Alcohol deranges digestion and disturbs the 
action of nerve-tissue. 

To judge from these tests, therefore, alcohol is not only 
not a regular food, but, if used as such, acts as a poison. 

But alcohol is a product of saccharine fermentation ; 
and sugar is a very important food. 
Dr. Flint on Dr. Flint says (op. cit.) — 

Inte^fsigar " Sugar is an important element of food at all periods 

to nutrition. 

been maintained by chewing shoe-leather. Does this bring shoe- 
leather within the category of foods ? Life has also been said to 
continue quite anomalously, vsdth a total absence of diet. Is then 
nothing a food ? Whether alcohol is a supplementary or incidental 
food is dealt with later on in chapter x. on Therapeutics. 

* Dissertatio Sistens Ineho'iantia, by Dr. Linnseus, Upsala, Sweden, 
1V62 : "Agunt adeoque hsec inebriantia ut ignis potentialis quiin, 
radu, favet, calescit, urit, comburit." 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 69 

of life. In the young cMld it is introduced in considerable 
quantities with the milk. In the adult it is introduced 
partly in the form of cane sugar, but mostly in the form 
of starch, which is converted into sugar in the process of 
digestion. With the exception of milk sugar, which is 
only present during lactation, all the sugar in the body 
exists in a form resembling glucose, into which milk sugar, 
cane sugar, and starch are all converted, either before they 
are absorbed or as they pass through the liver. In addition 
to these external sources of sugar, it is continually manu- 
factured in the economy by the liver, whence it is taken up 
by the blood passing through this organ. It disappears 
from the blood in its passage through the lungs. In the 
present state of science we are only justified in saying that 
sugar is important in the process of development and 
nutrition at all periods of life. The precise way in which 
it influences these processes is not fully understood." 

But the body, although richly supplied with and always Sugar never 
requiring sugar, never converts it into alcohol, not even in Sto alcohol 
disease, and hence we see such use of sugar is foreign to i^tiie 
the economy of the body. The oxidation of sugar in the even ta' ^° 
body is an innocent process of breaking up into carbonic m^g^^^g^jja^, 
acid and water. These products are eliminated by the nature of 
respiration, while the force released is used by the system, fermenta- 
Alcoholic fermentation results in two poisonous compounds, tion. 
alcohol and carbonic acid.* 

* The lethal or death nature of alcohol ^ is apparent in its very 

^ " The Fermentation of Food in our stomach is performed after 
a manner imperceptible, wherein all is quiet and silent, provided the 
Meats and Drinks be of a suitable Quahty and not too great in 
Quantity." Bat in alcoholic fermentation — "when the sleeping 
silent Powers or original Properties in all sweet Liquors or Juice, are 
disturbed, as they are in a full or strong Ferment, all the Art in the 
World cannot incircle or tame them ; for Fermentation is an opposite 
and contrary motion to Nature and threatens the total destruction of 
the whole — being, as it were, a Death to the United Powers and Uni- 
form Principles, a destruction of Multiplication and prevention of all 
farther Progression — and does, as it were, in a moment disunite — the 
original Forms become tumultuous, each Form with a rapid invading 
Motion laying, as I may say, violent hands on the sweet original 
Quality . . . for Fermentation in the strictest and best Sense, is no 
other than a certain vegetative and insensible Delirium of Madness ; 
all its operations when the Fermented Liquor is strong and Spirituous, 



70 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Alcohol 
inimical 
to life. 
[>T. A. Car- 
lysle on this 
point. 



The in- 
fluence of 
alcohol on 
the human 
system, 
subject to 
various 
qualifying 
conditions. 



§ 30, The general effects of alcohol in the animal world 
are inimical to life. Dr. A. Carlysle, in his work, On the 
Pernicious Effects of Fermented and Spirituous Liquors, as 
Part of Human Diet (London, 1810), says that "no living 
animal or plant can be supported by such fluids, ... on 
the contrary, they all become sickly and perish under their 
influence." In the animal world the poisonous nature of 
alcohol is easily tested. Put only a few ounces of alcohol 
in a pail of water in which are living fish, and in a few 
minutes they will die. Or, expose a fly to alcoholic vapour 
in a closed vessel, and it will speedily die. 



In treating of the special effects of alcohol on the 
human system, it must be premised that these effects are 
greatly influenced by a variety of conditions, such as kind 
and purity of the alcohol or alcohols taken ; whether 
diluted or not ; in large or small quantities ; whether taken 
habitually or occasionally ; in health or disease ; by children 
or adults ; ou full or empty stomachs ; the temperament of 
the taker, etc., etc. Still, excepting in rare instances, and 
only when the dose taken is very small, the trained observer 
can always trace harmful results from its use by man ; and 
if observers of the physiological effects of alcohols on man 
had generally given due consideration to each of these 
qualifying conditions, there is good reason for believing 
that most of the contradictory results of experiments which 
now exist as a chief stumbling-block in the way of this 
study would have been reconciled or removed. 

componnds. The distillate called alcohol consists of a variety of 
poisonous substances. Besides the ethyl, anayl, and butyl alcohols, 
there are acetic aldehydes and ethers, essential oils, variously named 
ethereal and fusil oils, and a number of other volatile unknown com- 
pounds, all of vrhich, when left at liberty, evaporate and dissipate 
beyond the ken of man. 



are in proportion ; and the same as being Disbanded from under the 
Government of its Superior Officers, so soon as a quantity of it is 
introduced into Man's Body, it plunders Nature of all its Sweet 
Virtues by drying and parching them up ; and at the same time 
breaks the Government of the Senses, turning Reason and Wisdom 
adrift ; so that the Body is in no better Condition than a Ship without 
either Pilot or Eudder." — Tryon's Letters (Letter 37, " Of Fermen- 
tation"). London, 1700. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 71 

§ 31. Alcoliol exercises two powerful infliiences on tlie Alcohol's 
two essential means of tlie maintenance of life — foods and Sfiun- 
water ; viz., retardation of tlie processes of digestion and fluence on 
assimilation ; and interference with, tlie aqneons nature of ^^ " '^^' 
the blood, and hence two general harmful results — indi- 
gestion and thirst, both of which are considered curable 
with alcohol, instead of with light, well-masticated foods 
and pure water, supplemented, at times — in extreme cases 
of indigestion — with artificial pepsine, etc. 

First, as regards the retardation of the processes of its effects in 
digestion and assimilation of foods by alcohol. Its effects d?gestS 
on the two classes of foods (nitrogenous and non-nitro- 
genous) is similar, though stronger in the case of nitro- 
genous foods, the albumen of which it coagulates. Of 
course the larger and stronger the dose the greater is its 
influence on digestion. It is a fact of common observation 
that drunkards may vomit half-digested or wholly un- 
digested food, hours and days after its ingestion, showing 
the power alcohol has to prevent digestion. 

But when alcohol is taken in small doses only, it is said 
to have quite a different effect — that of promoting instead 
of hindering digestion, by inciting a copious flow of the 
gastric secretion. 

The use of artificial means to restore natural processes 
to their original health, is the kind of work for which the 
physician is especially educated, and the means so used 
come under the general head of medicine. If alcohol acts 
as a promoter of digestion, it is acting as a medicine, and 
therefore belongs to the medicine chest and cannot be pre- 
scribed as a beverage, and should be treated of in this 
regard under the head of therapeutics. 

But the fact of the very general belief in and use of 
alcohol as an excellent tonic of digestion makes it necessary 
to deal with it here. 

In health, digestion is a natural process, which not only 
does not require, but would be impaired by artificial pro- 
motion. In nearly all cases indigestion arises from irregu- 
larity at meals ; poor, badly prepared, ill- cooked, and 
insufficiently masticated foods ; want of exercise, or undue 
and ill-timed exercise, etc., etc., all aberrations from the 
normal conduct of the body. 



72 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Prof. Dogiel 
on the 
rapidity 
of its 
entrance 
into the 
blood. 



A wise physician is familiar with these things, and 
knows that a retnrn to obedience to the simple laws of 
health will generally remove indigestion, and that artificial 
means are the last that can be properly resorted to ; and 
that when such are required, artificial pepsine and a number 
of harmless compounds will serve his purpose. 

A profuse amount of gastric juice will, no doubt, digest 
food more rapidly than a small amount, and therefore 
the abundant secretion of gastric juice provoked by the 
daily taking of a small amount of alcohol may for some 
time promote digestion. 

But to urge digestion is no more desirable than to urge 
growth. What is pre-eminently desirable is that these 
processes shall he natural; that there shall be no extortion, 
which always involves two very bad things — exhaustion 
and waste. 

By the enormous exudation which alcohol causes from 
the walls of the stomach the alcohol is diluted and rendered 
less acrid. Unless the dose of alcohol be large, it is 
very quickly diluted and absorbed into the blood to pre- 
vent its acting mischievously on the digestion and the 
stomach. In this process the intense affinity between 
alcohol and water plays an important part. Blood, as has 
been shown, consists overwhelmingly of water, and water 
is promptly diffused into the alcohol in the stomach, 
at the same time that the alcohol is absorbed from the 
stomach into the blood by the water in it. The arrest of 
the digestion, therefore, is more or less affected and quickly 
superseded, by the completeness and rapidity of the 
entrance of the alcohol into the blood current. 

Prof. Dogiel, in a paper on Monatomic Alcohols, read 
to Russian savants at Kasan, in 1873, said that the 
alcohol can be detected in the chyle of the thoracic duct, 
as well as in the blood, a minute and a half after its intro- 
duction to the stomach. 

Now, the solving power in the gastric juice is the 
pepsine, as we know, but this is itself insoluble in alcohol, 
and when mixed with alcohol, is hindered in its own office 
by the coagulating influence alcohol exerts on the foods. 

Drs. Todd and Bowman, in their work. The Physiological 
Anatomy and Physiology of Man (London, 1856, chap. xxiv. 
On Pigestion), say, "The use of alcoholic stimulants also 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 73 

retards digestion, by coagulating the pepsine, and thereby 
interfering with its action. Were it not that wine and 
spirits are rapidly absorbed, the introduction of them into 
the stomach in any quantity would be a complete bar to 
the solution of the food, as the pepsine would be pre- 
cipitated from solution as quickly as it was secreted by the 
stomach." 

It must, however, be noted that the alcohol, though Alcohol a 
apparently helpful at the moment by procuring a profuse JJ^Jcg^^f 
flow of gastric juice, secures this temporary effect at the chronic 
cost of great waste of this precious fluid, not only at the ^"^"^ ^ses wn. 
time, but by necessitating — because of the degradation of 
the blood of which gastric juice is an outcome — larger and 
larger recurrent demands upon it, wbile steadily im- 
poverishing it in quality and weakening the activity of its 
solving power, the pepsine ; and the stomacb must ulti- 
mately become bankrupt from these extortions, and indi- 
gestion, with its train of countless diseases, must ensue. 

Dr. ¥. R. Lees, in his essay, Is Alcohol a Medicine ? Dr. f. r. 
(London, 1866), admirably sums up the effects of alcohol mSyofSi'e 
on digestion and the stomach in these words : — effects of 

" Should it be objected that, though alcohol cannot digestion!^ 
directly gi've force, it can aid the stomack to digest more 
food, which will ultimately supply the material of tissue, I 
reply, this is a blunder in inference and a mistake in fact. 
For, firstly, alcohol has no advantage as a local stimulant 
over a little ginger or pepper, in exciting a flow of juice, 
but, as an ansesthetic, interferes wdth perfect alimentation, 
and, in especial, arrests that change of matter in the body 
which supplies the valuable material of the gastric juice 
itself. Hence, secondly, while more fluid may flow, it is 
not so strong in its digestive power. This, thirdly, agrees 
with fact, since abstainers have better and more regular 
appetites than moderate drinkers, and can eat and digest 
more. Fourthly, alcohol irritates the mucous surface of 
the debilitated stomach, though it may deaden the feeling 
of pain for a while. Fifthly, experiments have often proved 
that alcohol retards digestion, hardening the food and pre- 
cipitating the pepsine of the digestive juice." 

The effects of alcohol on the stomach itself depend, of 
course, upon the relative rapidity with which the alcohol 



74 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

is drawn into ihe blood current, whicli in turn depends 
greatly upon the relative amount and dilution of the 
alcohol (and the proportion of salts and ethers in the 
alcoholic liquor) at any one time present in the stomach ; 
the relative health and age of the taker ; the familiarity of 
his stomach with alcohol ; the power and activity of the 
excrementory organs, etc., etc., all of which are considera- 
tions absolutely essential to a scientific prescription of 
alcohol as a promoter of digestion, and some of which 
are quite beyond certainty of calculation. In one word 
— even on the assumption that alcohol may be nsed as a 
medicine, it is quite clear that no general prescription of 
it could ever be justifiable, but that prescription of it must 
always be based on a careful diagnosis of each particular 
case. 

If the stomach is little accustomed to alcohol and the 

dose taken is not very large, the damage done by it in a 

fairly healthy adult organism is comparatively small. The 

water yielded by the mucus of the stomach, as well as by 

the increased flow of the gastric juice, for the dilution of 

the alcohol, together with the rapid absorption of the 

alcohol into the blood, co-operate to lessen the injury to 

the mucous membrane of the stomach. 

Dr. William Still, the results of the ingestion of alcohol are never 

Beaumont's innocent, and how little feelings and general signs indicate 

on the the real condition of the stomach, even after liberal in- 

theCanadfan ^T-^^gencc in alcohol, was conclusively demonstrated in Dr. 

hunter, _ William Beaumont's * Exjperiments and Observations on the 

t. ar m. Q^gf^^Q Juice and the Physiology of Digestion (Plattsburg, 

1833). His observations were based on the phenomena 

exhibited in the famous case of the Canadian huntsman, 

Alexis St. Martin, who was accidentally shot, the ball 

entering his side and piercing the stomach. He recovered 

from the wound, but an opening remained, which was 

nsed " as a door by which to introduce substances into the 

stomach, and as a window through which to look in and 

examine effects." 

Dr. Beaumont tried St. Martin's stomach with alcohol, 
and as this hunter had been a man of temperate habits the 
results were most valuable. After a few days of free in- 
dulgence in spirits by St. Martin, Dr. Beaumont made 
* Surgeon- General of the United States army. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 75 

these observations hy means of the aperture in the patient's 
stomach : " The inner membrane of the stomach unusually 
morbid, the erythematous (inflammatory) appearance more 
extensive, the spots more livid than usual — from the surface 
of some of which exuded small drops of griimous hlood — the 
aphthous (ulcerous) patches larger and more numerous, 
the mucous covering thicker than common, and the gastric 
secretions much more vitiated. The gastric fluids extracted 
were mixed with a large proportion of thick ropy mucus, 
and considerable mu co-purulent matter, slightly tinged with 
blood, resembling the discharge from the bowels in some 
cases of chronic dysentery. Notwithstanding this diseased 
appearance of the stoinach, no very essential aherration of its 
functions was manifested. St. Martin complained of no 
symptoms indicating any general derangement of the 
system, except an uneasy sensation at the pit of the stomach, 
and some vertigo, with dimness and yellowness of vision, 
on stooping down and rising again ; had a thin yellowish- 
brown coat on his tongue, and his countenance was rather 
sallow, pulse uniform and regular , appetite good, rests quietly^ 
and sleeps as usual."* 

Thus we find that in large doses alcohol arrests diges- Summary of 
tion and damages the mucous membrane of the stomach, akohoi^oa 
and in the proportion that it is undiluted ; that in small digestion, 
doses it rapidly leaves the stomach ; that in all except the 
most minute doses it provokes an extraordinary flow of 
secretion which is more or less wasted ; that this of itself — • 
if alcohol be habitually taken — will, by constant overdraw- 
ing on the natural resources of the blood whence the gastric 
juice is distilled, impoverish the blood and degenerate the 
gastric juice, until impaired digestion becomes chronic 
indigestion. 

§ 32. But we shall presently see that the action of 
alcohol in the blood accelerates this condition, because 
alcohol degrades the blood itself. As the gastric juice is 
incapable of altering alcohol, it enters the blood as alcohol ; 
and as in the blood is the life, so anything injurious to the 

* The next observations made by Dr. Beaumont instanced the 
rapidity with, whicb St. Martin's stomach recovered its normal con- 
dition after a very few days' abstinence, and he adds, " The free use 
of ardent spirits, wine, beer, or any intoxicating liquors, when con- 
tinued for some days, has invariably produced these morbid changes." 



76 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The effects 
of alcohol on 
the blood. 



The food 
elements in 
alcoholic 
drinks. 



The Lancet 
on the 
nutritious 
elements in 
wines. 



blood is hurtful to life. As in tlie case of food, alcohol, in 
being drawn into the blood current, passes through the 
liver.* The general effects of alcohol on the blood (tissue 
in solution, both for renovation and what has been wasted) 
are to some extent similar to those it exerts on the food in 
the stomach ; it retards the oxidation of the food portions 
in the blood, and occupies as much as it can of the water 
contained in the blood. Hence there is an arrest of both 
the functions of the blood, the renewal of used-up tissue, 
and the carrying off of the refuse. 

The fact that alcoholic liquors almost always con- 
tain some residual undecomposed saccharine substances, 
which in themselves are feeding, and the fact that practical 
experiments have shown that under an alcoholic regimen 
there is an increase of bodily weight ; these two facts have 
greatly helped to spread the error that alcohol is food. 
I will therefore touch on these two points before pro- 
ceeding with the question of alcohol and the blood. 

§ 33. It has already been shown that alcohol itself is 
not food ; that if food exists in alcoholic drinks it is not 
found in the alcohol, and therefore unsweetened spirituous 
liquors which (minus adulterations) consist almost wholly 
of alcohol and water, are not feeding — a truth made 
apparent in the lean and wasted appearance of spirit- 
drinkers. In the case of drinkers of sweetened spiritous 
liquors this truth is less manifest, and is apparently quite 
contradicted in the case of the consumer of malt liquors, 
by a robust and rosy appearance. 

It has already been seen from Dr. Klein's testimony 
regarding the use of wine by the French troops during 
the siege of Paris, that wine, used as food, proved useless 
and worse than useless. An analytical report in the 
Lancet (Oct. 26, 1867) says, as to the real amount of 
nutritious elements found in wines : — 

" In every 1000 grain measures of the clarets and 
burgundies tested, the mean amount of albuminous matter 
present was only 1| grain, whilst in 1000 grains by weight 
of raw beef there are no less than 207 grains of such 
matter. That is, the quantities being equal, beef-steak is 



* In chapter vi. it will be seen that the organ which, next to 
the brain, suffers most £i-om alcohol, is the liver. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS, 77 

156 times more nutritious tlian wine" so far as albumen 
is concerned. 

Of course this is not a fixed standard as to wines, 
wMcIl vary in the amount of food they contain (see chap, 
iv. on " Adulterations ") according to the perfection of the 
vinification. The poorer that is, the greater the proportion 
of undecomposed residual food matters, but the more 
dangerous also are these, especially as producers of gout. 



But malted liquors, beer, ale, and stout, are commonly Malt liquors 
supposed to be not only innocent but healthy and ^P^gJ^gj^g^j 
nutritious ; and that this notion is spreading appears 
from the fact that during late years the number of beer- 
drinkers is on the increase in almost all countries, and for 
this reason I wish to deal with the beer question more in 
detail. 

Some consider malt liquors to be harmless on the 
erroneous supposition that they do not contain the same 
alcohols as other intoxicants ; others base their notion of 
the innocency of such liquors on their knowledge that 
they ordinarily contain but a comparatively small amount 
of alcohol, and are therefore comparatively harmless. 
Malt liquors are held to be nutritious because they are 
prepared from malt, and because malt-liquor drinkers 
usually grow fat and bear a superficial appearance of health. 

In chapter iii. it was shown that the intoxicating prin- 
ciple in all unadulterated alcoholic drinks is the alcohol, 
and therefore, whether taken in large or small quantities, 
the tendencies to structural degeneration and the develop- 
ment of the " drink-crave " are the same in small beer as 
in rum or whisky. The glass of beer prepares the palate 
for the glass of whisky,* just as the taking of the penny or 
shilling prepares the way for the theft of the pound. The 
incipient stages of a downward career are nearly always 

* Beer- drinking is Tisiially the starting-point for becoming a 
drunkard, and malt liquors are especially dangerous by reason of the 
salt put into them. In an article on Brinks and Drinking (Eng- 
lish Mechanic, December 8, 1882), Dr. James Edmunds says, "One 
reason why beer-drinkers go back so soon and so repeatedly to the 
public-house is because salt is put into their beer for them ; the salt 
gives a certain piquancy to the flavour of the beer by irritating the 
nerves of the tongue, and it serves also to set the kidneys going, and 
bring the customer back to the public-house." 



78 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Lyon 
PI ay fair on 
the relative 
feeding 
powers of 
barley and 
malt. 



The food in 
alcoholic 
drink is not 
in the 
alcohol, but 
in the 
residuals. 



seemingly innocent, but when the sincere mind, perceiving 
the danger, resists the insidious approach of evil, it quickly 
discovers that the gentle, scarcely perceptible first slips — 
full of specious compromise and self-deception — hold the 
essence of the deepest fall possible. 

As to the last point urged in favour of beer-drinking, 
that it gives bulk and ruddy complexion, and hence that 
the barley in the beer must be as nutritions as it is in the 
loaf ; it will be seen that this also is fallacious. Malt 
liquors consist of from three to thirteen per cent, of alcohol, 
with more or less undecomposed albuminous residues of the 
saccharine matters in the malt, with some salts — and to 
this extent, therefore, beer is food. But, in the first place, 
malt is not quite so nutritious as grain. 

In speaking of the feeding of cattle with, malt or barley, 
Dr. Lyon Play fair says, " Barley in the act of germinating 
loses a certain amount, both of the constituents which 
form the flesh and those which form the fat of the animal. 
A given weight of barley is therefore of greater nutritious 
value, botb as regards the production of muscle and fat, 
than the same weight converted into malt."* 

It must be recollected that malt, in being turned into 
alcohol, goes through a process, like the grape and potato, 
of organic degradation, and therefore, though malt is 
food, it does not follow that the alcohol made from malt is 
food. In fact, if there is food in the alcoholic drinks, 
whether malted or spirituous, it is not in the alcobol, but 
in the residual substances that remain undecomposed. 

The fat in the beer-drinker is composed of these 
albuminous residues, which, having been alcoholized, resist 
the action of the various . solvents in the system, and 
therefore, being neither fit for use in the body nor re- 
ducible to a form in which they can be excreted, they 
have to be stored away so as to prevent obstruction to the 

* Dr. Edmunds kindly writes me on this point : " I am not sure 
that Dr. Playfair has seen the whole truth in relation to the use of 
malted grain as food for cattle. Granting that the quantity of 
energy derivable from malted grain is less than that fi'om unmalted 
grain, the question remains whether the greater solubility of the 
saccharized starch in malted grain does not in some cases ensure 
more perfect absorption into the system, and thus that in food value, 
for the practical purposes of fattening, malted grain may be of more 
value than unmalted." 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 79 

circulation, and hence, so long as there is room, they are 
packed away immediately under the skin, and thus the 
fat and healthy appearance of the beer-drinker ! When 
there is no more room immediately under the skin, the fat 
has to be deposited in the interior of the body, and hence 
the common diseases of fatty degeneration of the kidneys, 
liver, heart, etc. 

Dr. J. W. Beaumont, in an address on alcohol and Dr. j. w. 
nutrition (Sheffield, 1863), alluding to the fact that ftTcrract^'e? 
brewers' men, who almost subsist on malt liquors, are of the fat ia 
remarkably fat, said, " This is conceded, but their stout- of mYit-^"^ 
ness does not arise from the alcohol. Where obesity liq^^o'' 
results from drinking malt liquors, it is from the nutri- 
ment contained in the saccharine portion of the con- 
stituents of the beverage, and not from the alcohol." 

Dr. T. Lauder Brunton, in his paper on the Influence Dr. T. L. 
af Stimulants and Narcotics on Health (contributed to the ^runton on 
Booh of Health, 1883), says that " Wine has a less power- 
ful local effect upon the stomach and intestines, and is 
less likely to destroy the digestive powers, than spirits. 
At the same time it does not contain any nutritious sub- 
stances in addition to alcohol, and so it does not tend of 
itself to fatten. Consequently, the wine-drinker is neither 
emaciated like the gin- drinker, nor bloated like the beer- 
drinker. As the beer-drinker takes beer in addition to 
other nutriment, he has a tendency to become fat and 
bloated at one time, although he may afterwards become 
thin and emaciated, from his digestion also suffering like 
that of the spirit- drinker. Notwithstanding the apparent 
stoutness and strength of beer- drinkers, they are by no 
means healthy. Injuries which to other people would be 
but slight, are apt to prove serious in them ; and when it 
is necessary to perform surgical operations upon them, the 
risk of death is very much greater than in others." 



The credit of the discovery that alcohol is a food because i>r. Ham- 
it tends to increase the bodily weight, belongs to Dr. W, SSiofbeing 
A. Hammond, of I^ew York, who, after practical experi- ^ ^"^^^ ^t 

, ,'. ,„ . ' . ' . c^ . i^ cause of Its 

ments upon himselt, explains m ms Fhysiological Efects tissue- 
of Alcohol and Tobacco upon the Human System (Phila- pJopertief 
delphia, 1863), that alcohol is a food, because it " increases 
the weight of the body by retarding the metamorphosis 



80 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

of the old and promoting the formation of new tissues, 
and limiting tlie consumption of fat." In an address to 
the New York Neurological Society (1874), Dr. Hammond 
(its president) reiterated these opinions, enlarging upon 
them in these words : " There are two facts which cannot 
be laid aside, and these are, that the body gained in 
weight, and that the excretions were diminished when 
alcoholic fluids were taken. These phenomena were doubt- 
less due to the following causes : first, the retardation of 
the decay of the tissues ; second, the diminution in the 
consumption of fat in the body ; and third, the increase of 
the assimilative powers of the system, by which the food 
was more completely appropriated and applied to the 
formation of tissues. After such results," says Dr. Ham- 
mond, " are we not justified in regarding alcohol as 
food ? If it is not food, what is it ? " Hence, Dr. Ham- 
mond concludes that alcohol is food, because it preserves 
tissue ! 

Irrespective of any scientific knowledge, it ought to be 
obvious that, if alcohol reduces appetite, and therefore 
consumption of food, and yet increases weight, it must be 
doing harm. 
The meaning But it is difficult to understand what benefit is expected 
preiTvation *^ ^® derived from the tissue-preserving properties of 
of tissue. alcohol. Tissuc-preservation, if it means anything, must 
mean disease, just as much, though in an opposite sense, 
as fever means disease ; because tissue-preserving can 
mean nothing else but interference with the natural re- 
novation and depuration of the system, and that can 
scarcely be pointed to as an advantage, except presumably 
for prolonging life during starvation — a presumption with- 
out foundation — and possibly in wasting fevers, in which 
case, however, there would be required an intelligent com- 
putation as to whether or not the retarded oxidation 
would adequately compensate for the impairment of the 
blood. 

Health requires a proper balance between want and 
supply, and anything disturbing this balance produces 
disease — and retarded oxidation, which disturbs both of 
the processes which make^the health balance, can be nothing 
but disease. 

As to the increase of his weight recorded by Dr. Ham- 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 81 

mond, it miglit be due to conditions contrary to health. 
It is really curious what importance is attached to 
weight. It is well known that people of light weight 
have as good health, as much energy, capacity, and endur- 
ance, as heavy people, and very generally more, and that 
there are both light and heavy people who equally lack 
these precious blessings. Of course circumstances alter 
cases. Weight tells in forcing one through a crowd or 
mob ; boatmen and blacksmiths need it, bat neither the 
athlete nor the boatman will use alcohol to increase his 
weight ! 

§ 34. Let us now return to the consideration of the 
effects alcohol has on the blood, and in the course of the 
argument the real character of alcoholic tissue-preserva- 
tion will also become further apparent. 

In the opening of this chapter it was pointed out that 
blood is tissue in solution (water solution). On the main- 
tenance of the purely aqueous character of the blood, the 
supply and scavenging of the tissues greatly depend ; and 
no substance is innocent which, entering the blood, 
materially alters this condition. Alcohol falls by this test. 
Its coagulating and dissolving powers — which, thanks to 
the rapidity of its entrance into the blood, are not allowed 
at once to ruin the digestion and the stomach — have freer 
play in the blood-current, though the profuse saturation 
does lessen its harmful effects. 

Alcohol being itself a feebly oxidized body, it is eager Special con- 
to absorb oxygen wherever obtainable. The life-processes the^influence 
of the body depend on the combustion which continually of alcohol on 

• T,^-, , A 1 • 1 J. ••• the blood. 

goes on m all its parts. As was shown m chapter in., 
oxygen is an essential factor in this process, hence the 
large proportion of oxygen in the body — and it is the 
function of the blood-corpuscles to carry oxygen to all 
portions of the system. Alcohol, because of its feeble 
oxidation, in entering the blood, seizes on this oxygen 
and takes as much of it as it can ; and, of course, the 
greater the amount of alcohol, the more oxygen does it 
withdraw from the blood, and hence the more is the com- 
bustion in the body retarded. And in the measure that 
the blood-corpuscles are robbed of oxygen, in that ratio 
do they also become degenerated. 

The German Dr. Carl H. Schulz, as lonsr ao:o as 1834, Dr. CariH. 

' ° ^ Schulz on 



82 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



alcoholic 
degeneration 
of the blood. 



Dr. Dumas, 

the physi- 
ologists 
Booker and 
Virschow, 
Dr. Baer, 
Prof. Her- 
mann, and 
Prof. Dogiel 
on the same. 



demonstrated* that alcoliol produces premature decay and 
death of the blood-corpuscles. " The colouring matter," he 
says, " is dissolved out of them, the white corpuscles lose 
their vitality, less oxygen can be absorbed, and less carbon 
carried off." (Dr. Dumas attributes the alcoholic degenera- 
tion of the blood to the action of alcoholic ferments feeding 
on the albuminous portions of the saccharine fluids in the 
blood.) And later experiments by such physiologists as 
Bocker and Virschow led to similar conclusions ; and Dr. 
Baer, in his AlcohoUsmus (Berlin, 1878), quotes Prof. Her- 
mann, of Zurich, v^ho, after experimenting with blood mixed 
with alcoholic vapour, describes the result as follows : — 
" It soon became apparent that the yellow blood chains or 
rolls, separate into their corpuscles, growing gradually paler 
until they wholly vanish." And Prof. Dogiel (op. cit.) 
says that alcohol rapidly causes the amoeboid movements 
of the white corpuscles to cease, and that at a certain con- 
centration the alcohol dissolves both the white and the red 
corpuscles. This fact is further confirmed by the con- 
dition observed in alcoholized blood when out of the body. 
Prof. Dogiel observed that blood from an animal under 
the influence of alcohol coagulates more slowly, and yields 
less fibrine than normal blood. He further found that if 
ethyl- alcohol be added to blood drawn from an artery, 
putrefaction is retarded. This would seem to indicate that 
the rate of putrefaction is very considerably determined 
by the amount of alcohol present in a corpse. He also 
found that arterial blood obtained from an intoxicated 
animal decomposes more quickly than the normal blood. 
Prof. Dogiel does not explain this, but it seems probable 
that it is because alcohol prevents healthy blood oxidation, 
-and checks the removal of waste ; thus the blood becomes 
impaired and fetid, and when let out of the body, the 
alcohol evaporates, and the decomposing matters already 
in the body will then, of course, more rapidly decompose 
than would healthy blood. f If the blood contains about 

See Be alimentorum coctione experimenta nova (Berlin, 1834), 
and Die Wirkung des Branntweins in der .Trunksucht, in Huf eland's 
Journal fur pract. Eeillcunde, April, 1841. 

f An indicator of inapoverishment of the blood is the hair. 
In an old work, entitled Letter on the TJnivliolesotneness and 
Destructiveness of Fermented, Distilled, and Spirituous Liquors, which 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 83 

one per cent, of alcohol tlie vital functions are extinguislied, 
as the flame of a candle is, in air containing a certain pro- 
portion of carbonic acid. About one-balf per cent, of 
alcohol in the blood produces drunkenness so profound 
that all but the purely animal centres of nerve-life are in 
a state of suspended animation ; life continues, but only 
as the smoky flame of a candle burns in air surcharged 
with carbonic acid. 

Thus the whole process of nutrition becomes vitiated Alcoholic 
through the ingestion of alcohol. The blood, impoverished of the w^ood" 
itself, and robbed largely of oxygen (the means necessary in relation to 
for its purification), can only partially fulfil its offices of of the tissues, 
carrying new matter to the tissues, and of removing the 
used-up tissue ; and the alcohol, at the same time, hardens 
both the materials for new tissue making in the blood, 
and the refuse matter ; and this refuse, which in the ordi- 
nary course of healthy conditions would be cast out, is 
largely retained in the blood. 

The German Dr. Boker, by a well-devised and carefully Results of 
excuted series of experiments, proved that the presence of ^^- g^^^^^'f 
alcohol in the living system actually diminished the sum regarding 
total of elimination of effete matter daily. tlTue'^-pre- 

The character of the alcoholic tissue-preservation is servation. 
further demonstrated in its action on the secretions from 
the kidneys. It is well known that alcohol increases the 
quantity of urine, but it is not equally well known that 
the secretion of urea, which forms about half the solid 
matter in the urine, and is the chief conveyancer out of the 
body of nitrogenous waste, is diminished by the action of 
alcohol, and that the portion by this means left in the 
body is rank poison to it. 

§ 35. But the harm alcohol works to the whole nutrition 
is further intensified by its waste of water. 

Water, as was said in the introductory remarks on 

was repnblislied in 1750, Dr. Hales, a physician distinguished for his 
careful physiological investigations, states — " It is the well-known 
observation of the dealers in hair for wigs, that they can distinguish 
the dram-drinker's hair by the touch, finding it harsh and dead- 
ended and unfit for use. ... It is also found that these pernicious 
drams not only alter the quality, but also, by their drying and 
corrosive power, lessen the quantity of hair ; and, what is a melancholy 
proof of the great prevalence of this wicked practice, there is now so 
much less hair to be bought among the lower people." 



84? THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

physiology, is even more important to life than foods are, 
and therefore a permanently continued insufficiency in 
the supply of water is even more injurious than a' com- 
parative insufficiency of food. 
Water the Water is the means for cleansing the inside as well as 

aMcielnser outsidc of the body. If a considerable portion of salt* 
of the body meat, for example, has been invested, water is profusely 
as outside, sccreted for the dilution of its sharp principle and to wash 
it out. The blood, in consequence of this extra demand, 
becomes thick and unable to sapply the necessary fluids to 
the tissues ; hence a call for water, i.e., thirst. 



Now alcohol, besides being dangerous to the digestion, 
blood, and tissues (in the measure that it is undiluted), 
and hence forcing the body in self-defence to saturate it 
with water (as it does an over-dose of salt, for example), 

* In his prize essay On the Use and Abuse of Alcoholic Liquors in 
Health and Disease (London, 1849), Dr. William B. Carpenter 
admirably exposes the assumed resemblance between alcohol and salt 
as an essential to health, or at least a healthful commodity. He says, 
" It has been maintained that although alcohol cannot itself serve as 
an article of nutriment, yet that, like salt, it is a valuable adjunct 
to other articles ; and that, although in large quantity it may be 
decidedly noxious, yet that in small it may be very beneficial. 
Now, strange to say, the substance with which it has been thus com- 
pared is that of all others to which it will least admit of being truly 
likened. For salt is not a mere casual adjunct to our necessary food, 
but is itself an indispensable ingredient of our diet. It is contained 
in large proportion in the blood, and in every fluid that is secreted 
from it, and enters into the composition of most of the tissues. It is 
present, too, in most of the ordinary articles used as food, vegetable 
as well as animal; and when this natural supply is deficient, the 
instinctive craving, both of man and animals, leads them to resort to 
other sources, from which their bodies may derive the supply necessary 
for the maintenance of their normal or healthful constitution. 
Moreover, there is a very beautiful provision in the economy for the 
immediate excretion of any superfluity of this substance, which 
passes out of the body nearly as rapidly as it is taken in ; so that it 
is prevented from ever accumulating to an undue amount in the 
blood ; and the only mischief which an overdose of it can occasion is 
the production of a temporary irritation of the stomach, occasioning 
a craving for water, which speedily works a cure by carrying off the 
offending matter. Now, all that salt is, alcohol is not. It is not one 
of the proper components of the blood or of the tissues, and its 
presence in the circulation is entirely abnormal. There is no in- 
stiactive or natural craving for it." 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 85 

has, as before stated, a chemical affinity for water, and 
therefore occupies it, in spite of the protests of the body 
that no more can be spared. 

And thus we have one source of the ^^ drink- crave," The " drink- 
which, as will be shown later on, becomes at last, bj the resuft of* 
degeneration of the nervous system, almost like a consti- thirst. 
tutional need. " If drinking be long continued," says Dr. i>r. Flint on 
Austin Flint (op. cit.), "the assimilative powers become ^®p*^'"*- 
so weakened, that the proper quantity of food cannot be 
appropriated, and alcohol is craved to supply a self- 
engendered want" — (i.e., the want first engendered by 
the deluding action of alcohol is met and momentarily 
beguiled, only to be re-created by the originating agent 
of the want). " The organism may in many instances be 
restored to its physiological condition by discontinuing 
the use of alcohol ; but it is generally some time before 
the nutritive powers become active, and alcohol in the 
meantime seems absolutely necessary to existence." 

The foe is met by the system, at the very entrance The exaction 
(the mouth), by water. Instantly that alcohol enters the uaadeby 
mouth, it is mixed with a profuse secretion of saliva, yielded upon the 
by the salivary glands in obedience to the signal fi^om the ^ stein * *^^ 
nerves in tbe mouth communicating with them. Of course 
the same demand for water is made everywhere through- 
out the body, in order to quench the flames of the burning 
element as it enters the stomach, as it courses through the 
blood-vessels, and as it is expelled from the system. 

It is well known that, after a night's drinking bout, the 
drinker's mouth in the morning is hot and dry. Why ? 
Partly, no doubt, because of temporary paralysis of the 
salivary gland nerves, but also because the drain upon and 
waste of the water of the system has been too great to admit 
of a sufficient preparation of saliva in time for breakfast. 

And when we remember that the body consists of from 
seventy-five to eighty per cent, of water, and that saliva — 
so essential to digestion under the best circumstances — is 
more necessary than ever when the whole nutritive system 
and processes have been weakened and deranged — it 
becomes still more apparent how much harm alcohol does 
to the body. 

Owing to ignorance about alcohol, the drinker, if he The system's 
can, meets the body's demand for water with some alcoholic ^'2'lr'mis- 



86 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

understood drink, ^.e., alcohol and water, but he feels only partial satis- 
afcohor^ ^^^ faction therefrom, because the water found in the drink he 
takes has only been enough to partially satisfy the water 
demand. 

Drinkers of alcoholic beverages decry water- drinkers 
for the quantities of cold water they pour down their 
throats. As a matter of fact — incontestable fact — alcohol- 
drinkers take a great deal more of cold water than do 
water-drinkers. There is, of course, no essential differ- 
ence in the systemic construction and needs of an alcohol 
and a pure-water drinker. Both require an equal amount 
of water for the performance of their life functions. They 
obtain about the same amount of water from their foods, 
although, as a rule, the pure-water drinker eats more than 
the alcohol-drinker, and therefore, perhaps, ordinarily 
speaking, gets somewhat more water from his food. But 
as to the ingestion of water as water, the alcohol- drinker 
must drink a great deal more than the water-drinker, 
because not only does the alcohol- drinker's system have 
continually to wash out and dilute the alcohol, but the 
alcohol itself also calls for water on its own account; 
hence further thirst, the call for more water ; and the call 
is met, but only in connection with more alcohol also. And 
the more anxiously the system cries out for pure water to 
quench its thirst, the larger and stronger doses does the 
ignorant victim of alcohol pour down his throat ; and if not 
stayed by the hand of Mercy, his thirst will not be slaked 
except by the waters of Death. 
The miscbief § ^^- ^^^ ^^ i^ not Only the blood itself that is harmed 
alcohol does by alcohol ; just as it wounds and scorches the mucous 
v^essels. ^^ ' membrane of the stomach, so it ruins the blood-vessels. 
Dr. James In his Iccturc on Alcohol as a Medicine (London, 1867), 

thlr^ur'' ^^' J^^es Edmunds says — 

" The blood carries certain earthy matters in it in a 
soluble state, these earthy matters being necessary for the 
nutrition of the bones and other parts of the body. You 
all know that when wine is fermented and turned from a 
weak sweet wine into a strong alcoholic wine, you get 
what is called a ' crust ' formed on the inside of the bottle. 
"What is that crust ? Why is it formed ? That ' crust ' 
consists of saline or earthy matters which were soluble in 
the saccharine grape- juice, but which are insoluble in the 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 87 

alcoliollc fluid. We find in drunkards tliat tlie blood- 
vessels get into the same state as the wine bottles from the 
deposit in their texture of earthy matter which has no 
business to be deposited, and forms, as it were, a ' bees- 
wing ' or ' crust ' in the blood-vessels of the drunkard, in 
his eye, and in all the tissues of his body. The result is 
the tissues get weak and brittle, and in performing their 
duties they break down ; thus the blood-vessels burst under 
a little unusual strain, and we get apoplexy and sudden 
death, and paralysis and slow miseries of all sorts." 

In a letter to me March 24, 1884, Dr. Edmunds thus 
elucidates this point : — " Just as when earthy salts are 
thrown out of solution in ordinary water by merely boiling 
it, a fur is deposited inside the kettle ; so the wine, during 
its maturing process, deposits certain saline earthy matters 
on the inside surface of the bottles, forming what is called 
the 'beeswing,' and wines in the blood make similar 
deposits on the sides of the blood-vessels. The ' beeswing ' 
looked for by the drinker in the wine-bottle, is looked for 
by the physician in the eye of the wine- drinker, as the 
well-known arcus senilis. This arcus senilis is only an out- 
ward and visible sign of general internal change, such as 
earthy degeneration of the arteries, fatty degeneration of 
the heart, cirrhotic degeneration of the liver and kidneys."* 

And with such attested results on the blood and sir James 
tissues from the use of alcohol, it is no wonder that ^^Sng 
Sir James Paget should warn his disciples against operating against 
on drinkers, even "moderate" ones. operations on 

" Be rather afraid," he says, " of operating on those, of moderate 
whatever class, who think they need stimulants before they 
work ; who cannot dine till after wine or bitters ; who 
always have sherry on the sideboard ; or are always sipping 
brandy- and- water ; or are rather proud that, because they 
can eat so little, they must often take some wine. Many 
people who pass for highly respectable, and who mean no 

* Dr. Henry Munroe, in his lecture on the Physiological Action of 
Alcohol {Temperance Tracts, New York, 1874), states that "the eminent 
French analytical chemist, Lecann, found as much as 117 parts of 
fat in 1000 parts of a drunkard's blood, the highest estimate of the 
quantity in health being 85 parts, while the ordinary quantity is 
not more than two or three parts ; so that the blood of the drunkard 
contains forty times in excess of the ordinary quantity." 



88 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Various 

theories as 
to what be- 
comes of 
alcohol after 
its entrance 
into the 
blood. 

Baron 

Liebig's 

theory. 



Dr. Flint on 
the function 
of fat. 



Dr. Drysdale 
on the 
relative 



harm, are tlius daily damaging their health, and making 
themselves unfit to bear any of the storms of life." 

When the effects of alcohol on the nervous system 
come under consideration, it will be seen how the blood- 
vessels suffer still further by the paralyzing tendency of 
alcohol on the nerves controlling the vascular system. 

§ 37. The next point regarding alcohol and the blood 
is what becomes of the alcohol after it has entered into the 
blood-current. TTo point in the whole alcohol controversy 
has been more hotly debated than this, and even to-day the 
medical world and the physiologists stand divided upon it, 
in numerous camps, under many leaders. 

The first really earnest endeavours of science to clear up 
this point are of comparatively recent date. The first 
theory to receive any general adherence was tbat started 
by Baron Justus von Liebig, some forty years ago, viz., 
that as alcohol was obtained from the heat-generating 
foods, it must be a heat-generator ; that just as alcohol in 
being burned in a lamp is transformed into carbonic acid 
and water, while its energy is liberated as heat, so likewise 
is it oxidized in the body, and transformed into the same 
two compounds ; and hence alcohol must be a heat-gene- 
rator, and, in that sense, a food. The absolute proof 
recently obtained that a chief effect of the ingestion of 
alcohol is the reduction of heat, of course disproves 
this theory in toto ; but there are various other effects, 
which, as will be seen later on, militate against Liebig's 
theory. 

His theory is, at best, based on pure assumption, viz., 
that alcohol is to be classed with sugar and fat as special 
heat-generators of the body. 

Dr. Austin Flint (ojp. cit.) says on this point, " There is 
no sufficient ground for supposing that fat has any such 
exclusive function " (that of producing heat) ; " its office is 
in connection with the general process of nutrition." As 
to sugar, he says, " In the present state of science we are 
only justified in saying that sugar is important in the 
process of development and nutrition at all periods of 
life. The precise manner in which it influences these 
processes is not fully understood." 

And Dr. Drysdale, in a lecture on the death-rate of 
abstainers and non-abstainers (London, February 25, 



PHYSIOLOGICAL KESULTS. 89 

1884), wittily observed tliat if alcoliol was a food, tlien merits of 
another heat-producer, paraffin, might as well be counted pai^^affinTs* 
in on the same g-rounds. respiratory 

^ foods. 

Liebig's theory gained numerous adherents, and even 
to-day holds a place in the medical world. Some fifteen 
years elapsed before any effective opposition could be made 
to it, but in 1860 there appeared a work by three leading 
French physicians, L'AUemand, Perrin, and Duroy, entitled Tiieories of 
The Bole of Alcoliol (Paris, 1860), which took the opposite pefHa.'^anf 
view, declaring that alcohol leaves the body just as it Duroy 'as to 
enters it, that is, as alcohol. ^i^es l\ 

From numerous most careful experiments on animals alcohol. 
— compared with such as it has been possible to make on 
man — which established the identicalness of alcoholic effects 
on beast and man, they concluded that alcohol is neither 
oxidized, i.e., converted into carbonic acid and water, nor 
changed into aldehydes and acetic acids in the organism, 
but that it remains unchanged, and is expelled as alcohol 
through the lungs, skin, and especially the kidneys. Says Dr. Perrin, 
Perrin, in his article on the Physiological Action of ^^^f. J. 
Alcohol in the Encyclopoedic Dictionary of Medical Sciences Bouch'ardat 
(Paris, 1865), "There is not found in the blood or the ^fthesaScl 
expired air any trace of the transformation or destruction 
of the alcohol. It accumulates in the nerve centres and in 
the liver, and finally it is excreted through the diverse 
channels of elimination. Hence the conclusion that the 
alimentary role of alcohol has no other pretence to a 
scientific basis than that of an experimental error." 

Neither of these opposing theories has been universally 
accepted, and the great body of physicians stand between 
these two — that is, they believe that alcohol is in part 
oxidized and in part excreted, unchanged ; but they differ 
widely as to the amount oxidized as well as the form of 
oxidation. The followers of Bergeron think that most of 
the alcohol, after remaining some time, is expelled, and 
a small part only oxidized. 

Prof. J. Bauer, on the other hand, in his Foods and 
Dietetic Cure for Sick People, which forms the first part 
of Prof. Ziem^sen's Handbook of General Medicine (Leipsic, 
1883), affirms that the greater part of alcohol is oxidized, 
" being changed into carbonic acid and water," while " a 



90 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Difficulty of 
arriving at 
certain con- 
clusions. 



A possible 
solution to 
be found in 
the hydro- 
lytic 
ferments. 



small portion of the alcohol is in unchanged form pnt 
forth from the body through the skin, langs, and 
kidneys." 

Others — as, for instance, Drs. Bouchardat and Sandras, 
and their large following, who hold that alcohol is partly 
oxidized and partly excreted — claim that the oxidized 
portion is converted into acetic acid. An infinite variety 
of opinions exists as to how and in what proportion alcohol 
is oxidized or excreted. 

§ 38. It is a difficult matter to deduce a tenable theory 
from analysis, comparison, and combination of the various 
leading opinions on this point. One thing, however, seems 
clear, that the Liebigian theory cannot be correct, because, 
were alcohol a heat-generator, the heat of the body must 
be increased by the taking of alcohol, which, as we now 
know positively, is not the case. 

This and other arguments against the theory of Liebig 
will be considered later on. 

On the other hand, the failure of the most careful and 
exact efforts to obtain from the excretions of the body 
anything like the ingested amount of alcohol, goes strongly 
against the theory that all the alcohol passes through and 
out of the system, unchanged. 

Alcohol is a baffling and mysterious thing. Other 
poisons, vegetable as well as mineral, generally single out 
some specially vulnerable part of the system in which to 
do their fell work ; but alcohol attacks the whole system 
(with some special preference for the liver and brain), by 
this diffusion making both the apparent degeneration of 
the system more generally even, and hence less con- 
spicuous, and the tracing of its results in the system also 
more difficult. But as under some circumstances portions 
of alcohol certainly disappear, it must be that the body, 
in some manner unknown to us, is able to dispose of a 
certain amount. 

If Science would turn its ferreting eye in this direction, 
it may be that a clue to this mystery would be found in 
the discovery of some compound in the body of the drinker, 
not existing in that of the non-drinker. It is certainly not 
an unreasonable supposition that some of those hydrolytic 
(hidden) ferments, whose office and functions so puzzle the 
physiologist, may have a part in this mystery also. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL KESULTS. 91 

One tMng can be affirmed, that in whatever way 
tlie body may be able to dispose of alcohol, there is 
in that fact no valid argument weighing against the 
evidence that it is out and out a poison, foreign to the 
system (being found, if at all, only in infinitesimal traces 
in the excrementitious matters), and that it damages and 
deranges the whole nutritive and circulatory processes, and 
also, as will presently be shown, particularly injures the 
nervous system. 

When alcohol is taken in large doses, we know that 
som.e of it is excreted in unchanged form. A small part 
goes direct from the stomach, out, as refuse ; some is 
evidently exhaled, judging both from the fcetid breath and 
from the fact that a small percentage of the ingested 
alcohol can be traced in the exhalations. 

Dr. E. Gr. Figg (op. cit.) says, " Though I might Dr. E. G. 
propound a very ingenious theory to show that the human pJffence*of 
stomach, with its purse-like, cardiac opening, is an elastic alcohol iu 
bottle, and that the affinity of alcohol for water rather and lathe 
than for either of its elements, would preclude the possi- t>rain. 
bility of its decomposition, I prefer tangible facts to 
plausible speculation. Having induced an individual to 
swallow a glass containing two ounces of spirit (eleven 
degrees above proof), I made him breathe through a tube, 
the opposite extremity of which was submerged in a 
tumbler containing two ounces of water, covered with a 
bladder skin to prevent evaporation ; the fluid became 
speedily impregnated with the characteristic odour of 
alcohol. To meet the scepticism which might endeavour 
to establish an analogy between this fluid and the essential 
oil of lavenders or other fragrant substance, the perfume 
of which has been known to pervade the atmosphere of 
a room for weeks (withoat any appreciable diminution in 
the quantity or quality of the original mass), and to anti- 
cipate the inference that the bulk of the alcohol had 
actually been decomposed and appropriated, though from 
its volatile nature an infinitesimal portion had escaped 
that process, and was then being discharged at the lungs, 
I varied the experiment by causing a person intoxicated 
for several hours to give sudden short expirations through 
a tin funnel used for decanting liquids, the narrow ex- 



92 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

tremity of wliicli was in proximity to a gas-jet. The 
contemporaneous evolution of blue lambent flame an- 
nounced the presence and density of the spirit." 

The writer of the article Alcohol in Dr. James 
Hinton's Physiology for Practical Use (London, 1880) 
Alcohol says, " If the breath of a person who has drunk so 
fn'^the^'^^^ little even as a glass of light ale, containing three drachms 
expirations, only of Spirit, be conveyed through a test solution of 
mntou's chromic acid (one part bichromate of potash in three hun- 
physioiogy dred of pare sulphuric acid, its delicacy is so great that 
Use (London, the presence of -j-^ of a grain of alcohol can be detected by 
1880). ij^^^ j^i^Q presence of alcohol can be attested by a distinct 

colour-change." 

Alcohol is also under these circumstances traceable in 
the urine, and in all probability it is also thrown off by 
the skin. Dr. E. G. Figg, in his lectures On the Physio- 
logical Operation of Alcohol (Manchester, 1862), says, 
" In alliance with the organs of the lungs and liver we 
Alcohol also have the sJcin, a depurating medium. ... In cases of 
skin evapo- hcpatic obstruction, as calculi in the biliary common duct, 
Dr^°E% ^^® the onus of carrying off the bile is thrown on the skin and 
Figg.' ' kidneys, as evidenced in the surface of the one and the 
colour of the secretion of the other — a responsibility in 
which the lungs and intestines do not participate, though 
the circulation has equal access to all. The fact that the 
skin aids the liver in effecting the exit of noxious elements 
in the circulation, accounts for the pustular excrescences 
on the face and body of the drinker. It is not the agency 
of the alcohol which produces them, but the carbon ; the 
partial result of the disintegrated saccharine and adipose 
tissues, retained in the arterial vessels by the alcohol 
monopolizing the pulmonary capillaries in effecting its 
escape." 
Dr. T. L. Dr. T. Lauder Brunton (op. cit.) says, " The skin is 

fh™sa*me.''° ^t first soft, with a slight satiny feeling, from which I 
have seen Prof. Neumann discover the alcoholic ten- 
dencies of a patient; and perspiration is easily induced. 
Later on, the skin becomes thick and discoloured, some- 
times red and sometimes sallow, and becomes liable to 
various diseases, the best known of which is acne rosacea, 
often called bottle-nose. Besides this, the skin may be 
affected with inflammation of various sorts, leading to the 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 93 

formation of ulcers, vesicular, scaly, or pustular eruptions, 
boils, and abscesses." 

And as the sMn, besides its depurating" office, is also 
the moderation- valve of the heat in the body, this affection 
of the skin is of great consequence to health. 

As to the action of the kidneys in the elimination of 
alcohol, an eminent physician writes to me that having 
with a catheter drawn off the urine from a patient under 
temporary alcoholic paralysis of the bladder, who was 
therefore unable to pass it naturally, he found by careful 
distillation that this urine contaiDed '2275 per cent, of 
alcohol ; i.e., rather more than 4^ of its volume consisted 
of absolute alcohol. 

A certain amount of alcohol has been, found in various 
parts of the body of persons who have died in an 
intoxicated state. L'Allemand, Perrin, and Duroy {op. Drs.L'Aiie- 
cit.) found alcohol in the proportion of 1"34 per cent, in S^Dm-oy^°' 
the brain. They were, however, by no means the first to OQ alcohol in 
make such observations. The late Rev. John Guthrie, in ^ ^^^' 
his Temperance Physiology (Glasgow, 1877), quotes the 
following from the statement made by Dr. William 
Beaumont in an address to the Yale of Leven Temperance 
Society (in 1830) as to a post-mortem examination : — " ' I Dr. William 
dissected a man who died in a state of intoxication after a the sSn? ^^ 
debauch. The operation was performed a few hours after 
death. In two of the cavities of the brain, the lateral 
ventricles, was found the usual quantity of limpid fluid. 
When we smelled it, the odour of the whisky was dis- 
tinctly perceptible ; and when we applied the candle to a 
portion in a spoon, it actually burned blue— the lambent 
blue flame, characteristic of the poison, playing on the 
surface of the spoon for some seconds.' Some doabts 
having been expressed in regard to these and other cases 
of alcohol being detected in the brain, Dr. Ogston, of 
Aberdeen, said at the time, ' I am happy to be able to 
add one case to their number. The body of a woman, 
aged forty, of the name of Cattie, who was believed to 
have drowned herself in a state of intoxication, was found 
on the 23rd of August, 1831, in the Aberdeenshire Canal. 
In company with another medical man, I was requested 
to examine the body, in order to report the cause of 



94 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

deatli, no one having witnessed tlie act. We discovered 
nearly four ounces of fluid in the ventricles, having all the 
physical qualities of alcohol, as proved by the united 
testimony of two other medical men, who saw the body 
opened, and examined the fluid.' " 
Dr. John Dr. John Percy, in his essay * An Experimental In- 

thlY&me. quiry concerning the Presence of Alcohol in the Ventricles 
of the Brain after Poisoning hy that Liquid, etc. (N'otting- 
ham, 1839), states that by distilling blood drawn from 
an alcoholized system, he had been able to obtain a fluid 
which, by its dissolving camphor and burning with a 
bluish flame, proved itself to be alcohol. In the brain he 
found proportionately still more, from which he concluded 
that a "kind of affinity existed between alcohol and the 
cerebral matter.". 

Dr. Figg (op. cit.) mentions the following noteworthy 
case : — " John Carter, a young athletic man, di^ank a pint of 
rum at one effort, dying comatose half an hour subsequently. 
On the authority of a coroner's warrant, two medical men 
(myself one) opened the body. The mouth, oesophagus, 
stomach, cardiac cavities, and lungs presented no appreci- 
able trace of the rum. Even on opening the craninm, we 
found nothing to warrant a supposition of its presence. 
On making a section into the lateral ventricles, however, it 
flowed out in considerable quantities, altered in colour, with 
its characteristic odour." 
Herr Kuyper On this same point, the Lancet (October 27, 1883) says — 
**resence of " ^^ ^^^ Zeitschrift filr analytische Ghemie (Journal of 

uicohoi in Analytical Chemistry) Herr Kuyper records the fact that 
the brain. j^^ ]^^g ascertained by distillation the presence of alcohol 
in the brains and liver of two persons who had fallen into 
the water when drunk and had been drowned. In one 
brain he found about one-fifth of a cubic inch of alcohol, 
and in one liver a little over half a cubic inch." 

When we come to the consideration of the effects of 
alcohol upon the nervous system, and the reflex action of 
the latter on the tissues and vascular system, it will be 
seen that large doses of alcohol paralyze the nerve centres, 
and thus the necessary orders for its expulsion, reduction, 
and change — which are given by the nervous system in 

* A gold medal was awarded by the Medical Faculty of the 
University of Edinburgh for this essay. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 95 

tlie case of smaller doses — are not forttcoming, and hence 
the enemy remains in possession of the strongholds until 
the nervous system can^rally sufficient forces to give the 
requisite orders. 

§ 39. The consideration next in order is that of the Effects of 
effect of alcohol on the temperature of the body. The alcohol on 
temperature of warm-blooded animals — man included — tureo™the^' 
depends chiefly on two conditions, viz., the amount of ^°'^y- 
combustion within the body, and the radiation of heat from 
the body. These two conditions mutually assist each 
other in keeping up an even temperature of the body, 
about 98-6° Fahr. 

The functions of life are greatly affected by even small 
changes of temperature, and only a few degrees above or 
below the normal mean will extinguish life; therefore 
anything which causes great fluctuations in bodily tem- 
perature is dangerous to health and life. It is at present 
generally admitted that alcohol lowers the temperature of 
the sys.tem, but not until recently has this fact been fully 
established. 

As early as 1840, the French physicians, Drs. Dumeril, opinions that 
Dumarquay, and Lecoint claimed to have discovered that alcohol 
the taking of alcohol reduced the temperature of the body, temp^erature 
and shortly after the German physician Nasse announced ^^*^?s^°^^~ 
the same idea, and at about the same time Dr. Prout, of Dumerii, 
London, strengthened these claims by combating the JlJd™Le?S 
oxidation theory on the ground that his experiments with i>r. Nasse, ' 
moderate alcoholic doses had shown a reduction in the Dr' Davies, 
exhalation of carbonic acid. Were Liebig's theory of ^^- ^™'*'^' 
alcoholic combustion into carbonic acid and water correct, and Drs. ' 
the amount of carbonic acid exhaled would be increased, Beaumetz 
as well as the temperature of the body heightened. and Audige. 

In 1850, Dr. Davies, of Chicago, U.S., published the 
results of his extensive series of experiments as to the 
effects of different articles of food and drink on the tem- 
perature of the body, as well as the amount of carbonic 
acid exhaled from the lungs. He says — 

" These experiments proved conclusively that during 
the active period of digestion after taking ordinary food, 
whether nitrogenous or carbonaceous, the temperature of 
the body is always increased ; but after taking alcohol, in 
the form of either fermented or distilled drinks, the tern- 



96 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Practical 
proofs that 
alcoliol 
reduces the 
temperature 
of the body. 



perature begins to fall within half an hour, and continues 
to decrease for from two to three hours. The extent and 
duration of the reduction of temperature was in direct 
proportion to the amount of alcohol taken." 

Notwithstanding these and many other convincing 
testimonies — by Dr. Edward Smith,* of London, for ex- 
ample—the question remained almost at a standstill until 
the publication in the Practitioner of September, 1869, 
of Prof. Binz's article on the Influence of Alcohol on the 
Temperature of the Body . 

This revived the issue. Prof. Binz stated that from 
numerous experiments which he had made with small 
doses of alcohol, using the centigrade thermometer, he had 
found that the experiments proved that small quantities 
of alcohol lowered the temperature considerably. Half a 
glass of light hock, or a small glass of cognac, caused a 
fall of from 0'4° to 0'6° in a very short time. In experi- 
ments upon dogs with fatal doses, there was a fall in the 
temperature amounting to between 4° and 5°, in from one 
to two hours, at which period death took place. 

The recent magnificent experiments on pigs by Drs. 
Dujardin-Beaumetz and Audige, at Paris (La Temperance, 
No. 1. Paris, 1884), seem to absolutely preclude the possi- 
bility of further controversy on this point — that the in- 
variable result of the use of alcohol as a drink is the lower- 
ing of the temperature, even though at first it may increase it. 

During the campaign in 1812 in Hussia, so fatal for 
Prance, it was found that almost all those soldiers who 
used alcoholic drinks succumbed to the cold and fatigue, 
while only a small proportion of abstainers fell victims to 
these rigours. 

The Esquimaux, Greenlanders, Laplanders, and other 
inhabitants of the coldest regions of the globe, have prac- 
tically experienced that alcohol unfits them for enduring 
their climates. 

As regards the Laplanders; some years ago it was 
feared by the Swedish Government that the race would 
freeze to death because of drink. An intelligent Laplander, 
while on a visit to Stockholm, was converted to total 
abstinence, and became its apostle in his native land with 



* Author of Practical Dietary, London, 1865. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 97 

such success that the fears of the extinction of this in- 
teresting race have disappeared. 

Alcoholic drinks are generally dispensed with in Arctic 
expeditions, experience having shown that thej chill 
instead of warm. The mercantile and war navies of 
several countries have abolished the use of alcoholics by 
their sailors ; others, among them those of England, do 
not prohibit the use of liquors in the fleet, but offer a 
petty inducement as a premium on abstention, giving 
instead of liquors good coltee and tea. It is the invariable 
testimony that abstainers are best capable of enduring 
fatigue and withstanding the fury of the elements. 



Some defenders of Liebig's theory have sought to Plausible 
reconcile the oxidation of the alcohol, and the fall in reconSung 
bodily temperature, by asserting that the heat generated J^^ ^^^^ °^ 
in the combustion of the alcohol is rapidly reduced by wUhtbe^^^ 
skin-radiation resulting from the effects alcohol exerts in ^o^bust^ 
dilating the capillaries. theory. 

Even though this reasoning were sound, it can scarcely 
be said to mend matters ! Liebig's disciples defend the 
use of alcohol only on the ground of its being a respiratory 
food. But if the heat thus generated is more than balanced 
by the heat given out, it is not easy to see what good can 
come from its use as a heat-generator. 

Were this explanation a true one, there would surely 
be that in it which should lead the advocates of the use 
of alcohol to pause. 

What a truly extraordinary procedure on the part of 
the body — to surrender warmth so necessary to health, 
and which under normal circumstances it would never let 
go ! It would almost seem, figuratively speaking, as if 
alcohol, taking life by the throat, forced the life- current 
to spring to the surface for air and strength to combat 
its throttler. 

As we have already seen, it is chiefly by means of 
skin-radiation of heat, properly proportioned to that 
generated by combustion within, that the mean tempera- 
ture is maintained ; and the rapidity and amount of such 
radiation depends on the porosity of the skin, and the 
intimacy of the connection between the blood-filled 
capillaries and these safety-valves. Now, fat is a non- 

H 



98 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

conductor of heat, and, being placed immediately under 
tlie skin, prevents tlie ordinary radiation of heat. (Hence 
one reason why fat people suffer so much from heat.) 
But if the Liebig radiation theory were true, fat drinkers 
would scarcely suffer any reduction in bodily temperature 
as compared with persons in normal flesh. 

Under certain conditions taking a small quantity of 
alcohol causes dryness of the skin, due probably to a sort 
of cutaneous nerve-paralysis. By the lessened exhalation 
of vapour from the skin under these conditions, loss of 
heat may be checked and the temperature raised. This 
increase of heat is not generated by the alcohol, which 
invariably reduces temperature, but is due to the shut- 
ting up within the body of the heat generated by the 
oxidation of food, together with various noxious elements 
which under natural conditions are thrown off by skin 
radiation. 
The effect of § 40. The last and most important physiological con- 
thTneivJlis sideration in the study of alcohol is that of its eff'ect on 
system. the nervous system. 

The innumerable strands of the grayish (in essence 
unknown) substance which pervade the tissues everywhere, 
and which in their totality form the nervous system, are 
more delicate, and their soundness of even more importance 
to health and life, than is the soundness of the tissues ; or, 
more exactly speaking, the nerves are of the first import- 
ance, because it is first through them that the tissues are 
operated upon. The nervous system is the immediate agency 
of the life-principle, protecting, guiding, and controlling 
the various life manifestations. 

It has been observed that the nerves do not all have the 
same general functions, and they have therefore been 
classed in two large divisions : — 
Physiology 1. The Cerebrospinal, including the brain and spinaJ 

vous^system. cord, with the nerves proceeding from them. Their fibres 
are chiefly, though not exclusively, distributed through 
the skin and the other sensory organs, and through the 
voluntary muscles. 

2. The Sympathetic division, which consists of, firstly, 
a double chain of ganglia and fibres extending in front of 
the whole spinal column, and from which proceed branches 
to the cerebro-spinal nerves. Secondly, various ganglia, 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. y\) 

plexuses, and nerve fibres, extending brandies to tbe 
thoracic and abdominal viscera. And, thirdly, a series of 
nerves controlling the blood-vessels, and knov^n as the 
vaso-motor nerves, and v^^hich are connected with both 
the cerebro-spinal and sympathetic systems. 

The intertwining and union of these systems of nerves, 
the mutual interdependence between them and the vascular 
system, the indissoluble union of mind and body, all com- 
bine to constitute the great difficulty in the way of dealing 
clearly with this part of the subject, since for the sake 
of cleaimess we are constantly compelled to distinguish be- 
tween the interlacing psychological and physiological facts. 

In the Influence of Exercise on Health, contributed to dt. james 
the Booh of Health (London, 1883) by Dr. James Cantile, Ca^tii^ on 
he says, " The voluntary muscles are under the direction andfunctions 
and regulation of the cerebro-spinal system. This consists vous^system 
of the brain, resident in the cranium or brain-case, and the 
prolongation from it that goes down the spine under the 
name of ' pith,' or spinal cord. From the brain and spinal 
cord NERVES pass to the muscles, carrying the impulse to 
the muscles ; they are called motor nerves. A nerve on 
reaching a muscle breaks up into fine filaments, and supplies 
every part of the muscle. It is by the medium of the 
nerves that the will acts on the muscles ; the impulse gene- 
rated in the brain, flies down the spinal cord and along 
the nerves to a muscle. 

" The nerves are like telegraph-wires laid on between 
station and station ; the originating battery, the brain, 
sends an impulse along the wires, the nerves, to work a 
machine at the other end, the muscle. But just as it is 
possible to send opposite electric currents along one wire, 
so in a nerve we have opposite currents. The one we have 
just spoken of is a downward current, from the brain to 
the muscles ; but there is also an upward current carrying 
messages from the skin and muscles to the brain ; these 
nerves are called sensory nerves, or nerves of sensation, 
because they carry the impressions of our sensation to the 
brain, where the knowledge gained from them is converted 
into motion, or stored up as memory, etc., for future use. 
The two sets of impulse are conveyed along separate fibres 
that are firmly bound together ; but close to the spinal cord 
the fibres separate, and we see a motor and sensory bundle. 



100 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

" The involuntary muscles of tlie body are under the 
regulation of a separate system of nerves, wMcli, as it 
presides over tlie organs of the more animal or vegetative 
part of our existence, is called the vegetative system. This 
consists of a double chain of small nervous masses called 
ganglia united together by nerves. The chains are arranged 
on either side of the spine. From the ganglia, nerves pass 
to the heart, lungs, and the organs of the alimentary canal, 
liver, pancreas, etc. — in fact, to all the abdominal and 
thoracic viscera. On account of the ready disturbance of 
all parts of this system, v^hen any one part is excited, it is 
called the sympathetic system. 

" Hence v^e find we have two sets of muscles presided 
over in the main by two sets of nerves : the voluntary 
muscles by the cerebro-spinal system, and the involuntary 
by the sympathetic. The chief difference between the two 
sets is that one, the sympathetic system, acting on the 
heart, lungs, and digestive system, continues in action 
from the birth to the death of the individual, knowing 
neither rest nor stoppage, as we understand rest ; whilst 
the other, the cerebro-spinal system presiding over the 
voluntary muscles, requires long intervals of quietude 
provided for by sleep." 
Parallel -^^ i^ i^ ^vst through the action on nerves that the 

effects of tissues are reached, it is plain that the affection of the 
the nervous nerves is of prior importance to that of the tissues, though 
Sssuer*^^^*^ it is also true that the effects conveyed through the nerves 
to the tissues recoil on the nerves ; for, like the rest of the 
body, the nervous system goes through the processes of 
decomposition and renovation, and therefore is dependent 
for its effectiveness on food ; and as alcohol interferes with 
the digestion and degrades and deteriorates the whole 
process of nutrition, it follows that it harms the nervous 
system, and hence the conclusion that, as alcohol ruins the 
body, so it ruins the mind. Indeed, we trace alcoholic 
effects on the nerves parallel with those on the muscular 
tissues ; such as degeneration of the nerve-tissue, the 
bursting of blood-vessels, and flooding the brain with 
blood, etc. 

As to the effects of alcohol on the nervous system, except 
in the grosser manifestations — those of "jollity" and 
drunkenness — there is little unanimity of opinion among 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 101 

experts, and as yet their research has covered but a com- 
paratively small portion of the whole field. 

It has long been a disputed point whether the peculiar 
sensations conveyed by the brain after the ingestion of 
alcohol are the result of reflex action, * or of direct action 
on the nervous system. It seems to be settled now, what- The first 
ever the subsequent reflex action may be, that the first action ^J^J^qi^q^ 
of alcohol on the brain is made direct through the blood. the brain is 

Dr. Baer (op. cit.) says, "Experiments on brute and pjfg^gj.^^ 
man teach that in a comparatively short time after its this point. 
injection, subcutaneously or into the food channels, alcohol 
disappears from its place of introduction, being taken into 
the blood." And he proves that the primary act of alcohol 
in the system is its entering the blood, by the established 
fact that drunkenness is produced more rapidly through 
the direct injection in the blood than by its introduction 
into the body through any other channel. 

It seems, therefore, probable that some portion of the Possible 
alcohol, the moment it enters the mouth, is drawn into the^riddie 
the blood, which hies direct to the brain with it. "^^y t'^k^f ' 

In this, it seems to me, may be found the solution of one rapidly, in- 
of the hitherto most puzzling riddles of the alcohol question, an^^^morV^^^ 
viz., why a man who sips his drink gets more quickly slowly than 
drunk than he who gulps it down almost at once. For, if ^ny^Ja^en,^' 
it were — as most authorities claim that it is — only by by sipping, 
reflex action that alcohol operates on the system, then, 
obviously, an ordinary dose, swallowed almost at once, 
would more quickly intoxicate than would the same dose 
slowly sipped. 

* " By reflex action is meant the power which nerve-centres 
possess of receiving and perceiving an impression brought to them 
by a nerve from some part, and, as the result, of transmitting an 
impression through another nerve to some other, it may be distant, 
part. Thus an impulse conducted by nerves from without inward, 
reaches a centre, and by that centre, as the result, an impulse is sent 
through other nerves which conduct it from within outward. So, it 
is said, an impression or impulse is reflected by a nerve-centre. If, 
for a famihar instance, the skin be pricked, the part is suddenly 
withdrawn. An impression is conveyed from the spot injured through 
a nerve to a nerve-centre, and hence another impression is sent by 
the centre through another nerve to muscle, which then contracts 
and moves the part away." — W. S. Savory, surgeon to St. Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital, in his introductory chapter in the Booh of Health 
(London, 1883). 



102 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

If we rememlber the processes — that the saliva, on 
alcohol's entrance into the mouth, instantly dilutes it with 
water (and, for all that we know, in other ways minimizes 
the harmful effect before it enters the stomach) ; that in 
the stomach all of the alcohol — except the very small 
portion of it that goes out with the refuse — is farther 
diluted, as far as is practicable, by the gastric juice, in 
order to still further lessen its evil power before it enters 
the blood ; — when we bear all this in mind, it will be seen 
that in the case of the alcohol being slowly sipped, time 
would be given to all these defensive functions to act in 
the completest manner of which the body is capable, and 
thus the resulting intoxication would be much slighter 
than in the case of alcohol being speedily swallowed. 

But directly the reverse is usually the case. Why ? 
In the first place, during sipping, the vapour of the alcohol 
is inhaled, and thus instantly taken by the lungs into the 
blood and thence to the brain. (It is well known that 
workmen in spirit vaults are intoxicated by inhalation of 
the spirituous vapours alone.) Secondly, there seems no 
doubt that sipped wine is usually held in the mouth long 
enough for some small portion to be drawn directly into 
the blood from the mouth and thence also to the brain, 
and, hence, he who slowly sips his alcohol gets more quickly 
intoxicated than he who, by swallowing it rapidly, subjects 
it to the more manifold digestive processes, thereby re- 
tarding the directness and reducing the force of its 
assault on the brain. 



The action of alcohol on nerves has been a hotly dis- 
puted question, and much confusion, largely due to the lack 
of clear and accepted definitions, still exists on this point. 

Nerve affectants are generally divided into two groups 
— stimulants and narcotics. The dijB&culty in properly 
defining these groups is similar to that I experienced in 
defining foods, because in neither case does there exist 
authoritative definitions. 

It is most unfortunate that science has not yet reached 
that height of accuracy which would furnish us with 
authoritative general definitions, because just as much as 
in our verbal communications it is necessary to have an 
accepted authoritative meaning for every word in order 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 103 

that a common understandiDg may be arrived at by all 
who use it ; just as necessary is strictness in definitions of 
technical terms and phrases. Confusion in terms springs 
from and produces confusion in thought, and as regards 
alcohol this confusion will continue as long as strict defini- 
tions of, for example, such terms as food, poison, stimulant, 
narcotic, moderate, temperate, large, excessive, use, abuse, 
etc., are lacking. 

As to stimulants, for example, in his Principles of yarious con- 
Medicine (London, 1841) Dr. Archibald Billing says — flictingdefi- 
" Tonics give strength, stimulants call it forth. Stimulants stimulants 
excite action, but action is not strens'th. On the contrary, and narcotica 

.' 1 , • V •'by Drs. Bil- 

over-action increases exhaustion. ling, Forbes, 

Sir John Eorbes wrote an essay of great merit on The ^f^i^ng^' 
Character of Stimulants (London, 1848), in which he says — Chambers, 

" The healthy fabric shonld be quite capable of main- B^unton. 
taining itself in vigour upon a proper diet, and with a due 
quantum of sleep and exercise, without any adventitious 
assistance. But if not, assistance should be sought from 
alteratives rather than from stimulants, which may produce 
a temporary excitement, but which tend to destroy the 
balance of the whole. The very nature of the stimulant 
is to produce a subsequent depression, and to lose its force 
by frequent repetition. The depression is proportional to 
the temporary excitement, and the loss is thus at least 
equivalent to the gain." 

But, taking a great authority in Materia Medica, Dr. 
Headland, we find narcotics defined to mean the same as 
Dr. Forbes means by stimulants. Dr. Headland says — 

" l!^arcotics are medicines which pass from the blood to 
the nerves and nerve-centres, and act so as first to exalt 
nervous force and then to depress it." 

In his Clinical Lectures (London, 1865) Dr. T. King 
Chambers says, " What is a stimulant ? It is usually held 
to be something which spurs on an animal to a more 
vigorous performance of its duties. It seems doubtful if 
on the healthy nervous system this is ever the effect of 
alcohol, even in the most moderate doses and for the 
shortest periods of time." 

Again taking one of the latest medical opinions, that 
of Dr. T. Lauder Brunton (op. cit.), we find the following 
definitions : — 



104 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

" By stimulants we mean those things whicli seem to 
increase our vital powers for the time being, and thns to 
give us feelings of greater strength or comfort. By nar- 
cotics we mean such substances as lessen our relationship 
with the external world. When used to a slight extent, 
narcotics simply afford pleasure by lessening the restraining 
or depressing effect which external circumstances exert 
upon the individual. Small quantities thus allow freer 
play to fancy. But in large quantities they abolish all 
the mental faculties, and render the person who has taken 
them completely torpid and incapable of voluntary thought 
or action. Their abuse may lead not only to individual 
but to national disaster. The most important stimulants 
are alcohol in its various forms, tea, coffee, and cocoa. 
The most important narcotics are. alcohol, tobacco, opium, 
chloral, and Indian hemp." 

According to Dr. Brunton, therefore, stimulants are so 
only in seeming, their manifestations are spurious. On 
the other hand, narcotics are so only in a physical sense, 
as in the mental sense they are liberators of the mind ; i.e., 
mental stimulants, when moderately indulged, becoming 
anaesthetics when taken in excess. According to him, 
alcohol in moderate quantities is a stimulant — that is, a 
giver of spurious strength; and in large quantities a 
narcotic — that is, a duller of the senses to impressions from 
the external world, 
Dr.Brunton's Apparently for the purpose of fortifying this peculiar 
feuce^ofhts Position, Dr. Brunton (op. cit.), after stating that "a 
position, very large quantity of spirits taken at a draught " will 
produce " great depression, or perhaps even stoppage of 
the heart's beats," assumes that "the impression made is 
transmitted by the sensory nerves of the stomach up to 
a nerve-centre, known as the medulla oblongata, at the 
upper end of the spinal cord, and thence down by the 
so-called inhibitory, or restraining nerves, to the heart. 
When taken in smaller quantities, however, the effect is 
quite different ; the impression it makes on the stomach 
is transmitted to the medulla oblongata by the sensory 
nerves, but instead of being sent down the inhibitory 
nerves, it is transmitted by the stimulating nerves of the 
heart, and thus increases the rapidity and strength of its 
pulsations." 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 105 

Retaining the division of nerve-affectants into Stimu- Definition of 
lants and Narcotics, I will define stimulant to mean such ^J^^Jg^'fnto 
food, medicine, or exercise as would in itself be energizing, invigorators 
and will divide stimulants, according to their effects on g"j.ltors" 
man, into two classes — Invigorators and Frostrators. 
Bodily exercise, for instance, ranks among stimulants ; 
whether it acts as an invigorator or prostrator being 
dependent upon the kind and degree of the exercise and 
the condition of the body. 

Narcotics, on the contrary, are poisons, of a paralyzing Definition 
nature, and may be divided into two classes ; ^lain narcotics, of narcotics. 
or those whose paralyzing effect is patent, and pseudo- 
stimulants, or those narcotics whose benumbing effects 
assume the guise of temporary stimulation, inasmuch as 
their action is expended primarily upon the inhibitory 
centres. 

Hence among narcotics are found alcohol, chloroform, 
opium, hemp, betel, tobacco, coca, thorn-apple, henbane, etc. 

Most of these narcotics are, in small doses, pseudo- 
stimnlants, and in large doses, plain narcotics. Alcohol 
is pre-eminently of this double character ; a pseudo- stimu- 
lant when taken in small doses, and a plain narcotic when 
heavily imbibed. 

With the small — the pseudo-stimulant — dose of alcohol. Meaning of 
there is temporarily all the appearance of heightened *^gjjj™ 
activity, but the life-forces expend themselves to no pur- stimulant, 
pose — or to a purpose which should not have existed, the ^^pie.^' 
necessity to dispose of the intruder. 

The paralyzing effect of alcohol on the nerves may be 
compared to the effect produced on the machinery of a 
clock, by a gradual reduction of the weight of its 
pendulum ; the machinery runs faster and faster, but this 
activity is valueless — the real principle, the time-keeping 
faculty, is paralyzed. 

Thus the animated appearance, the throbbing of the 
arteries, the peculiar sparkle in the eye, the flush of the 
face, and the activity manifested by the drinker are signs 
of danger.* The exti^a activity is caused by the systematic 

* The angry man shows the same signs — the flaming eye, turgid 
vein, etc., that, in the case of alcohol-drinking, are claimed as signs 
of benefit. In both cases, however, the appearances are the results 
of resentment. The angry man is calling on his reserve force for 



106 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

effort to avert harm, and originates in tlie incipient 
paralysis of the nerves caused by alcoliol. 

In fact, such signs, when they result from the ingestion 
of alcohol, are no more signs of healthy action than the 
downhill velocity of a coach, when the drag is taken off 
its wheel, is an evidence of safe progress. 

As deceptive as the outward manifestations are the 
inward sensations of ease, pleasure, and comfort resulting 
from the drinking of alcohol. They are all signs of 
paralysis. 

The starving man, after the acute pangs of hunger 
have reached the point where paralysis from inanition 
attacks the nerves, experiences the most agreeable sensa- 
tions, and sees the most delicious banquets set before him. 
Similar is the result in the case of death by freezing ; 
when the cold has paralyzed the nerves of sensation, happy 
visions of shelter and warmth lull the sufferer into the 
fatal sleep. 

A like incipient paralysis of the nerves furnishes the 
pleasing sensations resulting from the use of alcohol. 

Alcohol Alcohol is therefore clearly a narcotic poison, though 

clearly a i}^{^ f^g^ j^^g long been a matter of dispute. In his well- 
poison, known Essay on Drunkenness (London, 1804), Dr. Thomas 
Trotter says on this point, "As an article in Materia 
Medica, physicians have referred alkohol to the class of 
narcotics ; medicines which induce stupor and sleep, among 
which are reckoned opium, banque, cicuta, belladonna, 
hyociamus nicotiana, lauro-cerefus, etc. The operation of 
narcotics has lately given birth to much controversy in 
medical writing, the one party contending for a primary- 
sedative power in these medicines, which by suspending 
sense and motion " produce " that condition of the body called 
sleep. On the other hand, it is argued that the first effects 
of narcotics are stimulant, and that sleep " follows " as a 
consequence of preceding excitement ; they are therefore 
Prof Christi- ^^ ^® Considered as only indirectly sedatives." One of 
son.Dr.Figg, the highest authorities on poison. Prof. Christison, affirms 
that " alcohol constitutes a powerful narcotic poison." 

subduing or punishing the external offender ; the alcohol-dosed 
system is collecting its reserve force to conquer and expel the 
internal foe. 



and Dr 
Anstie on 
this point. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 107 

Dr. E. G. Figg (op. cit., 1862) sa.ys the same ; and Dr. 
Anstie, in tis Stimulants and Narcotics (London, 1864), 
denies even tlie temporary strengthening of the body from 
alcohol, and arrives at " one distinct conclusion — which 
appears to be very great — namely, that as in the case of 
chloroform and ether, the symptoms which are commonly 
described as an evidence of excitement, depending upon 
the stimulation of the nervous system preliminary to the 
recurrence of narcosis, are in reality an essential of the 
narcotic ; i.e., the paralytic influence." 

Dr. James Edmunds (op. cit.) says, " Supposing that Dr. james 
we were able by the use of alcohol to elicit latent f^^J^^^^^^^^ 
strength, and, as it were, carry a patient round the 
corner, i.e., through the crisis, when he might recover 
himself and go on safely — why, if that were so, the 
influence of alcohol would be invaluable in exhausting 
diseases, for it would often enable us to save life. But 
alcohol is never a stimulant at all when we come to examine 
it. It never acts as anything but a paralyzer. What are 
the reasons from which it has been argued that alcohol in 
small doses is a stimulant, instead of a narcotic, as it is 
in full doses ? These — that while in the one the brain is 
paralyzed, in the other the man will talk faster ; that 
while in the one the man's heart is paralyzed and his 
vessels distended, in the other the man's heart acts more 
vigorously, and his pulse beats more strongly. And it is 
inferred that because his heart beats more strongly, and 
the blood-vessels seem to be more active, the circulation 
must go on more actively, and that in cases of fainting 
and in cases of accident the circulation will often be kept 
up where otherwise it would fail. Let me ask if there is 
not a more probable explanation of the force with which 
the heart acts under the influence of a small dose of alcohol 
than that of supposing that the influence is in one case 
that of a narcotic, in the other that of a stimulant. 

" We have an analogy in the act of breathing. When 
we see a man breathing quietly we know that he is com- 
fortable, but when we see a man with asthma, we know 
that the air cannot get into his chest, nor its circulation 
go on aright in his lungs. What do we see ? We see 
him breathing with most wonderful ' vigour,' let us call it. 
Is that any better for the man ? Is that any indication 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

that lie lias got more air ? No physiologist would for a 
moment suggest that it was. He would say that the 
terrible breathing we see where an asthmatic patient leans 
out of window and strains all his breathing muscles to 
gasp for air, was an indication he could not get air into 
him, instead of an indication that he got more air. Yet 
that is a precisely analogous illustration, and the parallel 
will hold if we analyze by every scientific and physiological 
test. For instance, if the aeration of the blood be ob- 
structed in the capillaries of the lungs, the breathing 
becomes more frequent and more vigorous ; but this accele- 
rated action is always called ' difficult breathing,' and is 
evidence that the true respiratory changes are obstructed 
instead of being promoted. If the obstruction continue, 
this difficult or accelerated breathing rapidly exhausts the 
patient ; the effort cannot be maintained very long, and 
death necessarily follows. 

" If in a healthy animal we leave the heart and lungs 
intact, and the blood-vessels unobstructed, and simply 
close the windpipe with a ligature, violent efforts are made 
to inspire ; but as no fresh air reaches the lung-cells, the 
necessary exchanges between the blood and air cannot be 
made, the blood ceases to pass on through the otherwise 
unobstructed capillaries, the arteries behind get gorged, 
the heart makes a few violent struggles to force on the 
blood, but the circulation becomes arrested all through the 
body, and death ensues. 

" Here, in the phenomena of asphyxia, we see that the 
mere non-completion of the proper exchanges between the 
blood and the air absolutely arrests the blood-currents, 
while all the circulatory organs remain perfect, and the 
heart strains every fibre to urge on the life-stream. If 
instead of at once suffocating the animal, we allow it to 
breathe air containing its full proportion of oxygen, but 
containing also ten per cent, of carbonic-acid gas, we get, 
first, a retardation of narcosis of the respiratory actions in 
the lungs, like that, which alcohol, when mixed with 
healthy blood, produces in the tissues of the body. 
Breathing becomes quickened, as in persons suffering from 
any other impediment to respiration, and the heart acts 
violently and rapidly ; but as the carbonic-acid gas is 
carried by the blood all over the body, narcosis overtakes 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 109 

tlie brain and voluntary muscles, tlien tlie involuntary 
breathing muscles, and lastly the heart itself. Under these 
circumstances death is caused by a gradual asphyxia, so 
precisely like that caused by extreme drunkenness that 
nothing but the actual presence of alcohol in the body 
would enable the physician to tell one from the other. 
But until the narcosis has extended equally to every part 
of the body, we get effects like those primary effects of 
alcohol which are called ' stimulating ; ' i.e., we get violent 
and rapid pulsation of the heart, etc., etc. Yet carbonic- 
acid gas is the most perfect type of a narcotic poison, and 
it kills the deity of the fire-worshippers as remorselessly 
as it poisons every animal tissue."* 

In a subsequent paper on the Physiological Influence 
of Alcohol (1874) Dr. Edmunds again sums up the narcotic 
effects of alcohol in these words : " The so-called stimu- 
lating effects of alcohol are really only finer shades of that 
same narcotic influence which produces general stupefac- 
tion and universal paralysis when the agent is given in 
large doses." 

The narcotizing action of alcohol is twofold, i.e., direct The twofold 
and reflex. Its direct action is that of its direct assault on aSion^or^ 
the brain, whose highest functions it attacks with most alcohol on 
severity, because the higher the function the more delicate and nerves. 
and sensitive, and hence more susceptible to injury, is the 
brain-matter involved. Its reflex action is to paralyze the 
telegraphic nerve-apparatus by which the dazed and dulled 
superior brain sends its orders for the expulsion of the 
enemy. Hence the moral and spiritual functions — those of 
reverence for God, of aspiration ; the principles of self- 
abnegation — modesty, love, patience, and fortitude, are the 
first victims of alcohol, while the coarser powers of the 
brain are at first comparatively little affected, and hence 
the orders for the reduction of the enemy devolve on these 
inferior functionaries instead of being received from the 
highest. 

It is well known that— in the case of contending illustration 

on this point. 
* This is from an nnrevised newspaper report of what Dr. 
Edmunds then said — which accounts for the careless diction. The 
facts and opinions stated are, however, so clear and important that 
I have reproduced it here. 



110 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

armies — no matter how superior in every respect tlie one 
foe may be to the other, and no matter how certain the 
ultimate result of the engagement may be, if, at the very 
outset, the inferior force should succeed in disabling both 
from action and command the chief of the superior force 
and those next in power and in knowledge of his plans, 
many lives will be uselessly wasted, because the lower 
officers, ignorant of the plan of battle and not holding that 
supremacy over the men which the general possessed, 
issue contradictory and inadequate orders, resulting in a 
confusion which costs heavily before the chief can resume 
his powers and lead to victory. 

Similar, though infinitely more complex, are the 
paralyzing effects of alcohol on man. Under these the 
highest functions of the brain send muddled or no orders 
to the sub-fanctions, and they in their turn (the extent of 
the confusion, of course, being largely determined by the 
amount of alcohol ingested, and the health, conditions, 
temperament, and intrinsic character of the drinker) send 
stupid or no messages to their subordinates, and so on. 

But the lower the grade of a faculty, the coarser are 
the nerve-molecules and therefore the less susceptible of 
paralysis, but also the less qualified are such faculties 
— as in the case of the army deprived of its leaders — • 
either to conceive or carry out the work of the highest 
functions ; and hence in the body of man, as in the 
demoralized army, we find dire confusion perverting or 
destroying orders passed from higher to lower nerve- 
centres, and from nerves to tissues — and, as a result, the 
various manifestations of mental and physical disorders 
which are termed lack of co-ordination of ideas, lack of 
co-ordination of muscles, systemic demoralization, the 
wreck of manhood. 

Destruction "^^^ co-ordinating powers of voluntary action are the 

of the powers next to yield after the moral; the mechanical powers 
tfon?"*^^'^™^" yield last. For instance, if we put something in a drunken 
man's hand, if he be not too far gone, he will clutch it 
firmly, though without interest, idea, or intent — the action 
of his hand being entirely mechanical ; as is also the 
clinging of his legs to the saddle and the sides of the 
horse if he is put on horseback. His body sways about 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. Ill 

helplessly, but the involuntary muscles of his legs, called 
into action by the touch, cling to what touches them. 
The further alcoholic paralysis extends, the less does the 
victim know of shocks or pains. It is commonly known 
that a drunken man can fall a considerable distance and 
experience, in appearance at least, comparatively small 
damage. About three years ago a drunken man jumped 
from London Bridge into the Thames. He was picked up 
by a sailor, taken to a hospital, and in a few days showed 
no effects of the shock. 

It is also a fact of common observation that drunken 
persons can go about with ugly gashes and bruises on 
their bodies, without seeming in the least aware of these 
injuries ; and in the case of the hunter St. Martin, it was 
seen what a horrible condition could be produced in the 
stomach by alcohol, with comparatively no sensations of 
inconvenience to the patient. 

It is the same kind of paralysis which — when the vaso- 
motor nerves under its effects partially lose their con- 
tracting influence on the capillaries at the same time that 
the heart puts on extra force to expel the foe — makes the 
capillaries dilate so that the blood rushes into and partly 
remains in these minute blood-vessels. This state of things 
suffuses the skin with a glow, and thus heat is no doubt 
wasted. 

Prof. John Eiske, of Cambridge, Mass., U.S., in a keen prof. John 
controversial essay on Tobacco and Alcohol (Boston, 1869), ^j^J^^jg^^ 
says of the nerve symptoms produced by alcohol — alcoholic 

" The first narcotic symptom produced by alcohol is a P^^^^y^^^- 
symptom of incipient paralysis ; the flushing of the face 
is caused by the paralysis of the cervical branch of the 
sympathetic. This symptom usually occurs some time 
before the conspicuous manifestation of the ordinary signs 
of intoxication, which result from paralysis of the cerebrum ; 
we may search in vain among the phenomena of intoxica- 
tion for any genuine evidences of that heightened mental 
activity which is said to be followed by a depressive 
recoil. There is no recoil, there is no stimulation. There 
is nothing but paralytic disorder from the moment narcosis 
begins. From the outset the whole nervous system is 
lowered in tone, the even course of nutrition disturbed, and 
the rhythmic discharge of its functions interfered with." 



112 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Outside Still it would Seem that, at least in cases of small 

temperature doses, the dilation of capillaries is only in part tlie result 
quafmesthe of vaso-motor nerve paralysis, wMcli would seem to be 
fbl^?*^^i^^ largely influenced by surrounding temperature. In large 
laries. doses, no doubt, alcohol has such a paralyzing effect on 

the vaso-motor nerves that the capillaries are dilated 
almost the same in cold as in heat ; hence the danger 
of freezing to death. But in small doses this is not the 
case, because even though the drinker does not in a 
warm room feel the effects of drink, he becomes quickly 
intoxicated after entering the cold air, which seems to 
point the fact that in a warm room the system risks 
less from driving the alcoholized blood to the surface 
for oxidation, than from keeping it back in the interior ; 
while in the cold atmosphere it is safer to let the poison 
work through the interior of the system. And therefore 
we see, as in the case of the outward manifestations — the 
glow of the eye, etc. — the agreeable sensations caused by 
the blood pouring to the surface are deceptive ; it is not an 
increase, but a decrease of heat, the surface being warmed 
at the expense of the interior. And universal practical 
experience proves the fact. 

It would seem, however, to have been demonstrated 
that the minutest quantities of alcohol have some paralyzing 
effect on the vaso-motor nerves. 

The Rev. Mr. Merriman, of Worcester, Mass., U.S., 
in a most excellent essay, entitled JL Sober View of Ahsti- 
nence {Medical Temperance Journal, London, 1882), says — 
Drs Nicoi " ^^^- ^icol and Mossop of Edinburgh, conducting a 

Mossop, and scries of experiments upon each other, examined the base 
narcotic^ * ^ of the eye by means of the ophthalmoscope while the system 
effects on the was Under the influence of various drugs. They found 
that the nerves controlling the delicate blood-vessels of 
the retina were paralyzed, and the vessels themselves con- 
gested, by a dose of two drachms of rectified spirits — less 
than a quarter of an ounce of absolute alcohol— or about 
a table-spoonful of brandy. Here was a genuine paralysis, 
' a real physical damage to the nervous tissue.' The nar- 
cosis caused by this minute dose was, of course, less 
extended, but just as real as that which occurs when a 
man becomes dead-drunk. 

" As the nerves and blood-vessels of the eye have a 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 113 

peculiarly intimate connection with the brain, this experi- 
ment would seem to show ns through this little window, 
as it were, to the cerebrum, how it is that even half a 
glass of light wine ' goes to the head ' of many people, that 
is, causes for a moment a slight dizziness and blurring of 
sight ; and also how it is that, as Dr. E. Smith has shown, 
all the senses, particularly the sight, are blunted by very 
small doses of alcohol. Is it impertinent to suggest that 
even smaller quantities than this quarter of an ounce 
may cause incipient narcosis, if only we had an instru- 
ment sharp enough to detect it ? If so, the distinction 
in kind between the effects of large and of small doses, 
vanishes." 



The quality of the brain decides the clearness and The quality 
rapidity with which a message for any part of the body is decides^Sr 
conceived. The soundness of the various nerves through quality of its 
which the message is transmitted decides the accuracy and caSng^"^^" 
speed with which it will reach its destination ; and the power, 
relative health of the communicating agent, and of the 
tissue deputed by it to put the order into execution, 
decides the degree of perfection with which the transaction 
will be finished. 

Dr. J. Crichton Browne, in his paper on Education and Dr. j. Crich- 
the Nervous System (Book of Health, London, 1883), says: ^^''tSsTo^nt 
" The rate at which a nervous impulse travels along a 
nerve to a muscle can be accurately measured, and this 
has been found to vary much in different animals. In 
a frog, such an impulse travels at the rate of twenty- eight 
metres per second, and in a man at the rate of thirty-three 
metres per second. And in different individual men the 
rate of nerve conduction varies slightly. But it is in more 
complex nervous operations that the influence of quality 
of nerve-matter in determining rate of action becomes 
more manifest. Thus, as regards sensory impressions and 
voluntary actions founded upon them, the observations 
of astronomers show that of a number of persons intently 
watching for the transit of a star across the meridian, 
some will record the event a third or even half a second 
earlier than others, the difference between individuals 
in this respect being known as the personal equation. 
M. Hirsh has shown that there are differences in the 



114 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

rapidity witli wMcli impressions are transmitted fhrough 
the nerves of sight, hearing, and touch, and common 
observation affords abundant illustrations of different rates 
of action in nerve-centres connected with mental processes. 
If a man, when out walking, asks his way, and receives 
some rather complicated directions as to the route to be 
taken, he will frequently repeat these directions aloud 
once or twice before he fully comprehends them. The 
words have been instantaneously received and appropriated 
so as to be capable of reproduction, but the interpretation 
of them takes appreciable time. The lower process has 
been rapid, the higher has been more deliberately per- 
formed. And common observation also affords abundant 
illustration of different rates of rapidity of mental pro- 
cesses in different persons, and thus guides to a rough 
estimate of the quality of brain-matter. One man is 
spoken of as quick-witted ; another, as slow of thought. 
One is said to be vivacious, another lethargic ; and for 
scientific purposes differences of this kind are summoned (?) 
up in temperaments, in v^hich rapidity of mental action 
and quality of brain-substance are indicated by certain out- 
ward characteristics. From the nervous to the lymphatic 
temperament, through the sanguine and bilious and inter- 
mediate temperaments, compounded of these, there is a 
gradual diminution in the rate of nerve-action, and in the 
fineness of quality of nerve-substance." 



The manner in which alcohol — even when taken in 

very minute quantity— interferes with the healthfulness 

of nerve-communication, is another proof that it is always 

narcotic, i.e., a nerve-paralyzer. 

The late Dr. Dr. E. A. Parkes, in the Manual of Practical Hygiene 

JS-dt?the (I^ondon, 1878), gives the following description of the 

paralyzing ncrvc-paralyzing effects of alcohol : — 

hoioifthe^°" " ^^ ■QJost persoDS alcohol acts at once as an ansesthetic, 

power of and lessens also the rapidity of impressions, the power of 

thought. ^ thought, and the perfection of the senses. In other cases 

it seems to cause increased rapidity of thought, and excites 

imagination, but even here the power of control over a 

train of thought is lessened." 

Dr. Howie on ' In a lecture on Physiological Aspects of the Alcohol 

Question, to the conference of Liverpool teachers con- 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 115 

vened by the National Temperance League, June 9, 1883, 
Dr. Howie said, " In the present day we can calculate 
with precision the exact time, to a minute fraction of a 
second, which is required to transmit a message from the 
brain to the hand or any other portion of the body, and it 
has been distinctly shown that it takes much longer to send 
such a message after the person experimented upon has 
taken even a small dose of a narcotic. A message which 
could be sent in 0"1904 of a second required 0*29 70 seconds 
for its performance after two glasses of hock had been 
administered to the subject of experiment, thus showing 
how much even a slight narcotic effect interferes with the 
vital action of nervous tissue." 

How instantaneous is the disorganizing and crippling i^f. J. J. 
effect of this nerve-paralysis upon the mental powers, after teresting ex- 
even the smallest dose of alcohol, is shown by Dr. J. J. P^jj™^"*^, 
Ridge, in his interesting experiments, the results of which, doses of 
published in the Medical Temperance Journal for April, ^^^ohoi. 
1882, are almost entirely reproduced here : " If alcohol is 
at first a stimulant, of course the functions under con- 
sideration should be more easily and accurately performed. 
There are three of the functions of the nervous system 
which seemed most suitable for test purposes. These are 
(1) the sense of touch, or feeling ; (2) the sense of weight, 
or the muscular sense ; and (3) the sense of sight, or 
vision. I have tested each of these senses in the following 
ways : — 

" 1. Feeling. — An instrument was constructed in which 
were two points in an upright position, and about half an 
inch apart. A third upright point was situated between 
the two, and was capable of being moved in a straight line 
nearer to one or other of the stationary points. These 
three points were covered in so as to be invisible, but the 
forefinger could be passed through a hole in order to feel 
them. The middle point was moved by a rack and pinion, 
and the person tested was required to move it until, in his 
opinion, it was as nearly as possible equally distant from 
the two outside points. The movement of the middle 
point was recorded on a dial invisible to the subject of the 
experiment. This form of instrument was preferred to the 
ordinary sesthesiometer, because in that instrument (in 
using which the person has to state the earliest moment 



116 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

that lie can distinguish, the points of a pair of compasses 
as two, while they are gradually separated) imagination 
might more easily vitiate the conclusions. 



FEELING. 



§3 


Number of degrees 


.• 


Number of degrees 


§3 


Amount 


03 


on the dial 


^ 




on the dial 


03 


of absolute 


1 


from exact centre 


fc 




from exact centre 


^ 


alcohol 


I 


before alcohol. 


-A 




after alcohol. 


^ 


given. 


A 


6 


6 


3 








5 


10 


8 


10 








9-3 


2 drachms 


A 


6 


30 


4 


30 


10 


16 


20 


24 


46 


45 


5 


28 


2 drachms 


A 


8 


40 


7 


9 





16 


33 


24 


7 


30 





23-5 


2 drachms 


A 


3 




— 


— 


— 


3 


14 


— 


— 


— 


— 


14 


2 drachms 


A 


75 










75 


115 




~ 






115 


2 drachms 




115 


189-8 





" This table shows that alcohol in small doses exercises 
a narcotic influence on the nerves of sensation, or renders 
the perception of minute differences of size less keen and 
delicate. The numbers, though apparently large, do not 
represent a large actual distance between the points. 
They simply indicate the relative difference, the average 
before alcohol being twenty-three, and afterwards almost 
thirty- eight. The only conclusion that can safely be 
drawn is that there is certainly no improvement, no 
increased sensitiveness after small quantities of alcohol, 
but, on the contrary, slight deterioration. 

" 2. Weight. — The amount of muscular force required 
to overcome different resistances is measured by a special 
sense connected with the muscles, but exercised by the 
nerves. Comparison between two weights requires the 
action of the judgment, " The more acute the perceptive 
faculties are, so much the more readily will the judgment 
decide upon small differences between two weights. The 
effect of alcohol on this muscular sense was determined by 
an arrangement in which a weight was attached to a 
certain lever, and the person experimented upon was 
required to slide an equal weight along another lever, 
exactly similar to the first, until, in his opinion, the weights 
appeared to be the same. It is obvious that the position 
of the weights on each lever ought to be exactly the same, 
and, therefore, the more sensitive the muscular sense is, 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 



117 



the nearer will tlie individual be able to place them before 
be ceases to detect any difference. 

"The following table gives the particulars of the 
various trials, the average results both before and after 
alcohol, the quantity of alcohol administered, and the 
general average of the whole. All the individuals tested 
were adult men, and the alcohol was diluted with at least 
three times its bulk of water. 



WEIGHT. 



a3 


Distance between 


1 


Distance between 


?n 


Amount 


J 


the weights, in 


the weights, in 


^ 


of absolute 


s 


millimetres, lefore 


> 
< 


millimetres, after 


03 


alcohol 


I 


alcohol. 


alcohol. 


< 


given. 


A 


14 


8 











11-00 


7 


20 











13-50 


■J drachm 


Non-A 


22 


10 


16 


18 





16-50 


18 


20 


20 


22 


__ 


20-00 


1 drachm 


A 


3 


4 


2 


10 





4-75 


8 




8 


3 


— 


5-75 


1 drachm 


A 


4-5 


7 


9 


7 


7 


6-90 


13 


11 


12-5 


18 


13 


13-50 


2 drachms 


A 





2 


9 


5 


— 


4-00 


5 




13 


10 


— 


8-00 


2 drachms 


Non-A 


2 


4 


5 


2 





3-25 


10 




4 


6 





6-00 


2 drachms 


A 


2 


2 


5 








2-25 


1 




4 


3 


— 


3-75 


2 drachms 


A 


5 


7 


9 





— 


5-25 


10 


8 


8 





— 


6-50 


2 drachms 


A 


9 


1 


11 





1 


4-40 


3 


8 


11 


15 


4 


8-20 


2 drachms 


Non-A 


2 


3 


4 


1 




2-50 


6 


6 


8 


3 




5-75 


4 drachms 




60-60 


90.95 





General average, 6-060 before ; 9-095 after. 

"From this table certain facts are apparent: — (1) 
That in every case the average sensibility to weight and 
power of discrimination was decidedly diminished by small 
doses of alcohol, the general average indicating that the 
sensibility is diminished about one-third, or Q&'4i per 
cent. (2) That single trials are not reliable, since many 
circumstances may unite to produce a fallacious result. 
Thus, some of the trials after alcohol were actually more 
accurate than some of those before it, although the average 
of each individual conforms to the general average of the 
whole. (3) That non- abstainers are affected, as well as 
abstainers. (4) That small doses act in a similar way to 
large doses, and that the difference is only in degree, not 
in kind. 

"3. Vision. — This was tested by noting the distance at 
which a row of letters could be read with one eye, without 



118 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



alcoliol, and tlien tlie distance at which, the same letters, 
differently arranged, could be read with the sarhe eye 
afterwards. The distance varies very greatly in different 
individuals ; but, of course, in the same individual it would 
remain the same, provided that the alcohol had no effect. 
Indeed, one might naturally expect a slight improvement 
in the latter trials, by reason of the eyes becoming accus- 
tomed to the formation of the fancy letters employed. The 
following table gives the results obtained : — 

VISION. 



< 


Distance of distinct 
vision, In feet, 
before alcohol. 




Distance of distinct 
vision, in feet, 
after alcohol. 


- 1 


Amount of 

absolute 

alcohol 

given. 


A 


1 


1-25 


1 


6 


6-81 


1 


6-75 


6-50 


5-75 


6-50 


i drachm 


Non-A 


9 


1 


1 


8-5 


7-87 


8-75 


6-75 


5-75 


8 


7-31 


1 drachm 


A 


10-5 


10-75 


10-5 


10-5 


10-56 


8 


9 


7-5 


9-5 


8-50 


1 drachm 


Non-A 


425 


5-25 


5-25 


— 


4-91 


4-50 


4-50 


4-25 


— 


4-41 


2 drachms 


A 


10-25 


9 


7-25 


— 


8-83 


9 


9-25 


8 


— 


8-75 


2 drachms 


A 


11-25 


11-25 


10-25 


9-5 


10-56 


10-5 


10-5 


11 


8-5 


10-12 


2 drachms 


A 


15 


10-5 


13 


— 


12-80 


13 


10-5 


12 





11-80 


2 drachms 


A 


9-25 


10-25 




— 


9-75 


8-50 


8 


— 


— 


8-25 


4 drachms 


A 


6 


6 


5-75 


— 


5-91 


5-25 


4-75 


4-75 


— 


4-91 


4 drachms 


A 


16 


15-5 


15-75 




15-75 


14-75 


14-5 


15-25 




14-83 


4 drachms 




93-75 


85-38 





General average, 9-375 before; 8-538 after. 



" Here, again, it is clear that every one of the in- 
dividuals experimented on was affected injuriously by the 
alcohol. On the average, everyone had to approach nearer 
in order to distinguish the same letters. The general 
average indicates that it required an approach of nearly 
one foot to compensate for the injury done by the alcohol. 
To put it another way, the distance had to be shortened, 
on the average, 9 per cent. 

" In testing all three of these senses it ought in fairness 
to be borne in mind that considerable advantage was given 
to alcohol by the unavoidable necessity that the test with 
alcohol should follow the test without it. For thus, in 
every case, the alcohol gets all the credit of the improve- 
ment due to experience and practice. If this fallacy could 
have been avoided, it seems probable that the difference in 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 119 

favour of total abstinence would liave been even greater 
than it really was. 

" As two drachms of alcohol was the amount given in 
the majority of cases, it may be just worth a line to 
indicate that this represents one tablespoonful of spirits ; 
not quite balf a glassful of port or sherry ; a small wine- 
glassful of claret or champagne ; and not quite a quarter 
of a pint of ale. Now, these quantities are considerably 
short of the ' physiological minimum,' which is supposed 
not to do any one any harm. Indeed, the fact is established 
— that from the moment when sufficient alcohol has been 
taken to affect the nervous system at all, to the total 
extinction of nervous energy by a fatal quantity, there is 
progressive paralysis of every form of nerve function, 
capable of accurate determination, which has hitherto been 
experimented on. 

" It is to be carefully observed that, notwithstanding 
this real deterioration of variouLS powers, the individual is 
not conscious of any alteration, and nothing but an unmis- 
takable test can convince him that he is not so accurate or 
capable as he was before. Whether this arises simply 
from the inability of the judgment to compare the intensity 
of two impressions reaching it separately, and after an 
interval of from fifteen to thirty minutes, or whether it 
arises from incipient paralysis, or weakening of the 
judgment itself, is not easy to determine. Probably both 
causes operate to account for the failure to perceive the 
difference. 

" One thing hecomes very clear — namely, that the highest 
possible perfection of the nervous system is only possible with 
strict total abstinence. 

"Alcohol has, also, clearly no right to be called a 
stimulant. It is a narcotic from first to last, as Dr. Wilks 
and others have heretofore asserted, and the symptoms of 
stimulation are only the result of the peculiar, balanced 
condition of many functions, between accelerating and 
checking nerves ; the narcotizing of a checking nerve 
producing for the time being the same visible effect as the 
stimulation of an accelerating nerve. Alcohol, like other 
drugs, has its special preferences for certain nerve-tracts 
over others, and there is no doubt that in some persons one 
nervous function is more susceptible, and in others 



120 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Recent testi- 
mony in con- 
firmation of 
Dr. J. J. 

Ridge's ex- 
periments. 

Conditions 
qualifying 
length, ex- 
tent, and 
character 
of alcoholic 
paralysis. 



Theories re- 
garding the 
effects of al- 
cohol on the 
nerves in 
producing 
the drink- 
craving. 



Dr. Anstie on 
the same. 



Prof. Fiske 
on the same. 



General con- 
clusions as to 



another. Nevertlieless, its tendency may be broadly 
indicated as a paralyzer of nerve-function, or, more shortly, 
as a true narcotic." 

In a letter dated March 21, 1884, Dr. J. J. Ridge writes 
to me as follows : " Very recently Dr. Scongal, of New 
Mill, has repeated and confirmed mj conclusions, and adds 
that the sense of hearing is similarly affected by alcohol. 

The health, temperament, alcoholic heritage, and resis- 
tive power of the drinker ; the state of his stomach as to 
food; the vitality of the blood, activity of the excrementary 
organs, foreign ingredients in the alcoholic drink ; — these 
and other conditions and circumstances combine to deter- 
mine and qualify the length, extent, and character of 
alcoholic paralysis, and the amount of damage done, just 
as they do in regard to the nutritive processes ; and must 
equally be considered in forming an estimate of the effects 
of alcohol upon the nervous system. 



§ 41. In the preceding portion, on alcohol and digestion, 
it has been shown that the terrible drink-craving was caused 
by the avidity with which alcohol absorbs the water from 
the tissues, but it does not depend exclusively on those 
chemical properties of alcohol. One of the peculiarities 
inherent in all forms of sensuous excitation is that artificial 
excitement produces a cry for more of the excitant, and 
the more imperatively in proportion to the delicacy of the 
functions thus abused. 

Says Dr. Anstie (op. cit.), " A certain quantity of 
nervous tissue has ceased to fill the role of nervous tissue, 
and there is less impressible matter upon which the 
narcotic might operate. And hence it is that the confirmed 
drunkard, opium eater, or coquero requires more and more 
of his accustomed narcotic to produce the intoxication 
which he delights in — to saturate his blood to a high 
degree with the poison, and thus to insure an extensive 
contact with the nervous matter." 

Prof. John Fiske (op. cit.) says, " The perpetual 
craving of the drinker in all probability is due to the 
gradual alteration in the molecular structure of the nervous 
system, caused by frequently repeated narcosis." 

• Alcohol, therefore, is a narcotic always — from beginning 
to end, never anything else but a narcotic. Indeed, were 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 



121 



it otherwise, it would not be used in the ways that it is. the narco- 
Therefore, those who drink in the hope of increasing the of ikohoL*' 
pleasure of living, miss their object, as do those who drink 
in the hope of augmenting their mental powers. The 
lawyer, taking his glass before delivering his brief, dulls 
his anxiety as to the issue and his embarrassment in 
speaking; the orator, taking his glass as an inspiration, 
will possibly, by the irritation and jostle of ideas due to 
narcosis, be able to reproduce from his reserve stores of 
knowledge some flashy, perhaps eloquent periods, but 
rarely coherent or deep reasoning ; in neither case do feeling 
or thought become clearer or keener, but memory and fear 
are deadened, and a mechanical courage to stolidly get 
over what cannot be adequately faced, is often temporarily 
acquired. 

§ 42. Recent years have furnished the strongest proofs 
and testimony that the notion of alcohol as an auxiliary in 
brain- work is fallacious. 

Dr. E. G. Figg (op. cit.) says, "In a person drinking Dr. e.g. 
to stimulate a natural mental function, we soon witness effects of 
an alteration of object; for, experimentally convinced that alcohol when 
in the insolvency of the cerebral system as a basis, and mental 
the defective co-operation of the blood, that extraordinary stimulant. 
exhibition is not attainable, he must rest satisfied with 
reaching that which was once the normal standard of his 
powers, but from which he has retrograded in the collapse 
of frequent excess." 

In a word, alcohol disappoints and betrays all except 
those who seek sloth and death for body and mind. 

In a lecture on The Effects of Alcoholic Liquors upon 
Health and Work, delivered in Hon. Samuel Morley's 
warehouse, by Sir Andrew Clark, January 6, 1882, he said, 
" Every adult man who finds himself after trial — and every 
man should try — to be a thousand times better without 
alcohol, should not resume it, because he will work better, 
he will enjoy more, he will have a longer exemption from 
disease, he will probably live longer, and certainly he will 
be better in all the higher relations of life. ... I dare say 
if a man took a glass of wine, as sometimes people do to 
overcome nervousness, he might succeed, and indeed I am 
bound to say that that sort of help alcohol sometimes can 
give to a man, but it gives it curiously enough at the 



122 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

expense of blunting his sensibilities. . . . That is my 
testimony as to the effect of alcoholic liquors upon health 
and upon work, namely, that for all purposes of sustained, 
enduring, fruitful work it is my experience that alcohol 
does not help but hinders it. ... I am bound to say 
that for all honest work alcohol never helps a human soul. 
Never, never ! " 

Mr. A. Arthur Reade, in his work, Study and 
Stimulants (London, 1883), composed of one hundred and 
thirty-two letters and citations from various eminent 
literary and other brain workers, says in his concluding 
comments, " From a review of these one hundred and 
thirty-two testimonies ... I find " that " not one resorts 
to alcohol for stimulus to thinking, and only two or three 
defend its use under special circumstances — ' useful at a 
pinch ' under ' physical or mental exhaustion.' Not one 
resorts to alcohol for inspiration." 

I quote from Mr. Reade's volume the following concise 
and comprehensive testimony (given at Bedford Chapel, 
July 20th, 1882), by the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke: "It 
has been said that moderate doses of alcohol stimulate 
work into greater activity, and make life happier and 
brighter. My experience since I became a total abstainer 
has been exactly opposite. I have found myself able to 
work better. I have a greater command over any powers 
I possess. I can make use of them when I please. When 
I call upon them they answer ; and I need not wait for 
them to be in the humour. It is all the difference between 
a machine well oiled and. one which has something among 
the wheels which catches and retards the movement at 
unexpected times. As to the pleasure of life, it has been 
also increased. I enjoy Nature, books, and men more 
than I did — and my previous enjoyment of them was not 
small. Those attacks of depression which come to every 
man at times who lives too sedentary a life, rarely visit me 
now, and when depression does come from any trouble, I 
can overcome it far more quickly than before. The fact 
is, alcohol, even in the small quantities I took it, while it 
did not seem to injure health, injured the fineness of that 
physical balance which means a state of health in which 
all the world is pleasant. That is my experience after four 
months of water-drinking, and it is all the more striking 



PHYSIOLOGICAL EESULTS. 123 

to me, because for tlie last four or five years I have been 
a very moderate drinker. I appeal to the young and the 
old to try abstinence for the very reasons they now use 
alcohol — in order to increase their power of work and their 
enjoyment of life. Let the young make the experiment of 
working on water only. Alcohol slowly corrupts and cer- 
tainly retards the activity of the brain of the greatest 
number of men. They will be able to do all they have to 
do more swiftly. This swiftness will leave them leisure, 
the blessing we want most in this overworked world. And 
the leisure not being led away by alcohol into idleness, 
into depression which craves unnatural excitement, into 
noisy or slothful company, will be more nobly used, and 
with greater joy in the usage. And the older men, who 
find it so difficult to find leisure, and who when they find 
it cannot enjoy it because they have a number of slight 
ailments which do not allow them perfect health, or which 
keep them in over- excitement or over-depression, let them 
try — though it will need a struggle — whether the total 
abandonment of alcohol will not lessen all their ailments, 
and by restoring a better temper to the body — for the 
body with alcohol in it is like a house with an irritable 
man in it — enable them not only to work better, but to 
enjoy their leisure. It is not too rnuch to say that the 
work of the world would be one-third better done, and 
more swiftly done, and the enjoyment of life increased by 
one-half, if no one took a drop of alcohol." 

§ 43. The working classes do mostly believe that alcohol Opinions that 
increases their capacity for labour. Of course they are Jjjcts^the^' 
deceived by the general sensations and appearances, and capacity for 
practical tests have proved the fallacy of their belief. Beddoe^f ^^* 

Dr. Beddoes (in Hygeia, 1802) shows by comparison ^P^JJ^^'^^f, 
that drinkers, all otber circumstances being equal, could prrk?s, and 
do less work than non-drinkers. Count Woi- 

" Alcohol," says Dr. Baer, quoting from Dr. Donders, 
" is no savings-bank for muscular strength, as, in time, 
it utterly destroys it." 

"Brandy, in its action on the nerves," says Baron 
Liebig, " is like a bill of exchange drawn on the health of the 
labourer, which for lack of cash to pay it, must be constantly 
renewed. The workman consumes his principal instead of 
interest, hence the inevitable bankruptcy of the body." 



124 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

But tlie crucial test for tlie working classes is found 
in the resnlts of the experiments of Drs. ParkeS and 
Wollowicz.* 

From long-protracted comparative experiments, alter- 
nately with water and with alcohol, on a strong and healthy 
man, they found by counting the heart's beats on days of 
water-drinking and days of spirit ingestion, that alcohol 
greatly increased the heart's action. In summarizing these 
results they say — 

" Admitting that each beat of the heart was as strong 
during the alcoholic period as in the water period (and it 
was really more powerful), the heart on the last two days 
of alcohol was doing one-fifth more work. 

" Adopting the lowest estimate which has been given 
of the daily work of the heart, viz., as equal to 122 tons 
lifted one foot, the heart during the alcoholic period did 
daily work in excess equal to lifting 15*8 tons one foot, 
and in the last two days did extra work to the amount of 
24 tons lifted as far. 

" The period of rest for the heart was shortened, 
though, perhaps, not to such an extent as would be inferred 
from the number of beats, for each contraction was sooner 
over. 

" The heart on the fifth and sixth days after alcohol 
was left off, and apparently at the time when the last 
traces of alcohol were eliminated, showed in the sphygmo- 
graphic tracings signs of unusual feebleness, and, perhaps 
in consequence of this, when the brandy quickened the 
heart, again the tracings showed a more rapid contraction 
of the ventricles, but less power than in the alcoholic period. 
The brandy acted, in fact, on the heart, whose nutrition 
had not been perfectly restored. 

" It will seem at first sight almost incredible that such 
an excess of work could be put upon the heart, but it is 
perfectly credible when all the facts are known. 

"The heart of an adult man makes, as we see above, 
73*57 strokes per minute. This number multiplied by 
sixty for the hour, and again by twenty-four for the entire 
day, would give nearly 106,000 as the number of strokes 

* See Bibliography — Experiments on the Effect of Alcohol on the 
Human Body. — Experiments on the Action of Bed Bordeaux Wine 
(Claret) on the Human Body. London, 1870. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL RESULTS. 125 

per day. There is, however, a reduction of stroke, pro- 
duced by assuming the recumbent position and by sleep, 
so that for simplicity's sake we may take off the 6000 
strokes, and, speaking generally, may pat the average at 
100,000 in tlae entire day. With each of these strokes the 
two ventricles of the heart as they contract lift up into 
their respective vessels three ounces of blood each ; that 
is to say, six ounces with the combined stroke, or 600,000 
in the twenty-four hours. The equivalent of work rendered 
by this simple calculation would be 116 foot-tons ; and if 
we estimate the increase of work induced by alcohol, we 
shall find that four ounces of spirit increase it one-eighth 
part, and eight ounces one-fourth part." 

Identical results were reached by these physicians in 
their experiments with claret. There was the "marked 
effect on the heart . . . the twenty ounces (of claret), 
containing almost two fluid ounces of alcohol, were mani- 
festly too much for the subject ... he felt hot and 
uncomfortable, was flushed, the face was somewhat con- 
gested, and he was a little drowsy. . . . Moreover, alcohol 
then began to appear in the urine. . . . With regard to 
this healthy man taking any alcohol, we have no hesitation 
in saying he would be better without it." 



§ 44. To sum up, we see that alcohol is a substance General sum- 
entirely alien to the body, and incapable of being trans- ^^yjMogicai 
formed into anything useful to it; that it hinders the results of 
digestion, wastes the digestive fluids, tends to dissolve 
and damage the blood, and thus vitiates and retards 
all the life-processes — its action on the stomach and 
blood producing structural degeneration throughout the 
system. 

As to its effect on the nervous system, we see that it 
works through the blood directly on the brain and nerves ; 
that it narcotizes, and that in this narcotizing it espe- 
cially deadens the feelings of care, responsibility, and 
discretion, and upon the bodily powers its effects are 
shown in the failure of the power to co-ordinate compli- 
cated series of muscles, and in blunting the acuteness of 
the senses. 

Its affinity for water causes thirst for water, which the 
drinker mistakes for liquor-thirst, his mistake being 



126 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

strengthened by tlie spasmodic demand of tlie nervous 
ganglia for more irritation — lience the "body's irresistible 
craving for drink. These being the effects of alcohol on 
the whole organism, it follows that no one is or can be 
strengthened by its use, and that, whether used in modera- 
tion or excess, it is, speaking from the standpoint of 
physiology alone, an unmitigated curse to man, and as the 
poisoner of water — man's chief source of life — it is the 
great founder of death. 



CHAPTER YI. 

PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS, OR DISEASES CAUSED BY ALCOHOL. 

§ 45. In the previous part I have dealt with the chemical 
action and reaction between the body and alcohol. 

In this, the pathological — or disease portion — I shall 
deal briefly with the disagreeable experiences which TTatnre 
forces upon man in her protest against his use of alcohol. 
The difficulties hitherto encountered are here multiplied 
and intensified. All the complexities and intricacies, and 
the apparent contradictions which bewilder and confuse 
the physiological inquirer, confront the physician with 
large reinforcements. Even if alcoholic drinks were never 
adulterated, the exact diagnosing of alcoholic diseases 
would still be a matter of supreme difficulty. Where, for 
example, can a non-alcoholic standard be found, and 
without such an authoritative criterion how can accuracy 
be hoped for ? But not only is there no criterion to judge 
from, but unadulterated alcohol is a scarcely known 
article. 

But let us remember that without alcohol there 
would be no adulterations, while without the adulterations 
there would still be alcohol. 

Before considering the subject of alcoholic diseases, let Definition of 
us agree on definitions of the terms disease and health. dis^ease'and 

Disease is a self-suggesting word — dis-ease, i.e., dis- iieaith. 
turbance, dis-order. Health we may define as ease, peace, 
order. Health, therefore, is that state of individual being 
in which the body and mind are unanimous about the joy 
of living. 

This broad definition of health may almost provoke 
scorn ; not because it is not true, but because it is absurdly 
inapplicable to life as we find it ; because being true, then 



128 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Huss, the 
originator of 
the term 
alcoholism, 
and its 
division 
into acute 
and chronic. 



healtli is an unknown blessing, and there is nothing but 
disease in the world ; a terrible verdict to pronounce on 
man's misuse of himself and his fellow-beings. 

Practically, then, Jiealth is that state of being in which 
no part of body or mind offers any palpable, or more than 
evanescent signs of serious individual disturbance ; disease 
is the palpable manifestation of disturbance of the regular 
processes of life. 

AlcohoUsmus, or alcoholism, is the name for all diseases 
in any way found to be due to the use of alcohol. The term 
was first used by Dr. Magnus Huss, of Stockholm, in his 
AlcohoUsmus (1849-1851). He divides alcoholism into 
two groups : Acute alcoholism and Chronic alcoholism.'^ 
Acute alcoholism (drunkenness and its immediate con- 
sequences) is principally of a mental character, and the 
precursor and preparer of chronic alcoholism (the graver 
chronic mental disorder) ; but as chronic alcoholism is both 
of a physical and mental character, I will — in order to 
connect the physical phenomena as a whole with the 
mental phenomena as a whole — first deal with the chronic 
physical phenomena, then with acute alcoholism, and then 
with the chiefly mental phenomena and diseases. 



A. Physical Phenomena and Diseases. 

§ 46. " The term chronic alcoholism," says Dr. Huss, 
" applies to the collective symptoms of a disordered condition 
of the mental, motor, and sensory functions of the nervous 
system, these symptoms assuming a chronic form, and 
without their being immediately connected with any of 
these (organic) modifications of the central or peripheric 
portions of the nervous system, which may be detected 
during life or discovered after death by ocular inspection ; 
such symptoms, moreover, affecting individuals who have 

* Dr. James Edmunds says that in chronic alcoholism, " the body 
is one whose tissues are damaged, to begin with, by the long-continued 
use of alcohol. The case displays all the phenomena of the sot. With 
every temporary depression in health, a comparatively mild chill or 
a little excess in the habitual use of alcohol suflBces to bring on an 
attack of delirium tremens. This differs from acute alcoholism in 
that the subject is more prone to prostration and death, though the 
symptoms are less violent, and that recovery is much slower." 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 129 

persisted for a considerable length of time in tlie habit of 
drinking." 

Strictly speaking, chronic alcoholism includes all The scope of 
chronic diseases, physical or mental, coming within the ^i^^^oi^s'"- 
scope of either of the following categories : — 

1. Disorders occasioned by strain imposed on the system 
by alcohol. 

2. Diseases traceable to general system- degeneration 
produced by alcohol. 

3. Diseases which but for alcoholic systera-degeneration 
might have been averted or resisted. 

]^either place nor time are here afforded for going into 
the pathogeny, symptomatology, diagnosis, or nosology of 
alcoholic diseases, and we shall only quote some of the 
general utterances of the great authorities on these points, 
leaving the reader to discover, not what diseases do, but 
what diseases do not directly or indirectly owe, in part at 
least, their existence, character, and prevalence to alcohol. 

Prof. Christison, of Edinburgh, in a letter to the Chair- Prof. Christi- 
man of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, dated general 
July 26th, 1870, says of intoxication — diseases due 

/,T • j_- T 1*1 ••,..! to the use of 

i recognize certain diseases which originate m the alcohol, 
vice of drunkenness alone, which are delirium tremens, 
cirrhosis of the Hver, many cases of Bright's disease of the 
kidneys, and dipsomania, or insane drunkenness. 

" Then I recognize many other diseases in regard to 
which excess in alcoholics acts as a powerful predisposing 
cause, such as gout, gravel, aneurism, paralysis, apoplexy, 
epilepsy, cystitis, premature incontinence of ui-ine, ery- 
sipelas, spreading cellular inflammation, tendency of wounds 
and sores to gangrene, inability of the constitution to resist 
the attacks of the diseases at large. I have had a fearful 
amount of experience of continued fever in our infirmary 
during many an epidemic, and in all my experience I have 
only once known an intemperate man of forty and upwards 
to recover." 

Prof. Christison also claims that three-fourths, or even 
four-fifths, of Bright's disease in Scotland is produced by 
alcohol. 

In a Treatise on the Continued Fevers of Great Britain dj._ MurcW- 
(London, 1874), Dr. C. Murchison says : — sononcon- 

" A single act of intoxication may also predispose to fevers. 

K 



130 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Murchi- 
8on on func- 
tional 
diseases of 
the liver. 



Mr. Startin 
on skin 
diseases. 



typLns. I liave known several instances of persons exposed 
for months to the poison in its most concentrated form, 
who were not attacked until immediately after a debauch. 
There is no greater error than to imagine that a liberal 
allowance of alcoholic stimulants fortifies the system 
against contagious diseases." 

In the Croonian Lectures of 1874, to the members of 
the Royal College of Physicians, on Functional Diseases 
of the Liver, Dr. Murchison said — 

" It is the prevalence of beer and spirit drinking, and 
consequent liver- clogging, which accounts for the wide- 
spread use and countless forms of patent pills, such as 
Cockle's, Morison's, Holloway's, and others. These are 
taken by millions every week, and people find that if they 
do not take them they become bilious and unwell. They 
are all of a purgative nature, and by occasionally hurrying 
unspent material out of the system they give temporary 
relief to the overwrought liver. The wear and tear of this 
process must, however, tend to shorten life. 

" The sallow and unhealthy appearance of the face of 
the drinker indicates the diseased liver, the most common 
disease being the so-called cirrhosis or shrinkage of the 
liver, commonly termed in England the ' gin-drinker's 
liver.' " 

In July, 1882, Mr. James Startin stated that — 

" Sixty per cent, of the cases of skin disease which he 
has to deal with are due, in one way or another, to alcohol. 
His position, both as a consultant and surgeon to St. John's 
Hospital for Diseases of the Skin, render his experience 
large and his testimony important. There can be no doubt 
that the universal abandonment of alcoholic beverages 
would conduce as much to the health and clearness of the 
skin among the general population as among those female 
prison inmates who are declared, on unimpeachable 
authority, so frequently to recover their good looks by the 
unalcoholic regimen of their enforced retreat." 

In a lecture at Exeter Hall (April 18, 1882) Dr. 
Norman Kerr, in speaking of the diseases due to alcohol, 
stated that probably 60 per cent, of the cases of erysipelas 
were occasioned by it. 

Sir William Temple, in his essay upon the Cure of 
Gout by Moxa (Nimegaen, June, 1677), says — 



PATHOLOGICAL KESULTS. 131 

" Among all the diseases to wMcli tlie intemperance of 
this age disposes, T have observed none to increase so much 
as the gout, nor anj, I think, of worse consequence to 
mankind. . . . And if intemperance be allowed to be the 
common mother of the gout, or dropsy, and of scurvy, etc., 
I think temperance deserves the first rank among public 
virtues, as well as those of private men ; and I doubt 
whether any can pretend to the constant steady exer- 
cise of prudence, justice, or fortitude, without it. . . . 
I have known so great cares, and so many, done by 
obstinate resolutions of drinking no wine at all, that I 
put more weight upon the part of temperance than any 
other." 

Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in his famous work, Zoonomia Dr. Darwin 
(London, 1794), vol. i. sect. xxi. p. 251 (" On Drunken- «^g«^^- 
ness "), says concerning gout — 

" I am well aware that it is a common opinion that the 
gout is as frequently owing to gluttony in eating as to 
intemperance in drinking fermented or spirituous liquors. 
To this I answer that I have seen no person afflicted with 
gout who has not drank freely of fermented liquor, as wine 
and water, or small beer ; though as the disposition to all 
diseases which have originated from intoxication is in some 
degree hereditary, a less quantity of spirituous potation 
will induce the gout in those who inherit the disposition 
from their parents." 

In his work on The Nature and Treatment of Gout Dr. Garrod 
(London, 1859), Dr. Alfred Baring Garrod says — ongou . 

" There is no truth in medicine better established than 
that the use of fermented or alcoholic liquors is the most 
powerful of all the predisposing causes of gout; nay, so 
potent that it may be a question whether the malady 
would ever have been known to mankind had such 
beverages not been indulged in. Stout and porter rank 
next to wine in predisposing to gout ; cider and similar 
beverages will also act to some extent as predisposing causes 
of gout." 

Dr. Charles Drysdale, in his address before the Public Dr. Drysdaie 
Health Section of the British Medical Association, at J" J^^^^^'^ 
Sheffield (Aug. 3, 1876), said— ^ " 

" The drinking of beer is the greatest cause of gout 
among the population of London." 



132 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

The testi- At the Licensed Victuallers' Dinner, given at Birming-* 

SSeJ^' ^^^ (August 9, 1877), Mr. W. Bromley Davenport, M.P., 
Davenport, gavc tliis amusinglj naive testimony regarding gout and 
Lot^d Gran- wine :— 

viiie re- " My brother-in-law, Lord Granville, about two years 

gout through ago, told me he intended to give up wine altogether. I 
abstinence, -^^g yerj soTTj to hear it, because I thought it might injure 
him. He tells me he has given up wine, and whereas he 
used to suffer from the gout, he is now not troubled with 
it. If I were to look into my secret soul — if the priest in 
absolution got hold of me, and got into my soul, which I 
hope he will not — 1 should have to admit I was a little 
annoyed at finding him so well. I was, because his system 
and mine were so totally opposed, and I was a little bit 
disappointed." 



Dr. Richard- Dr. B. W. Richardson, in his Diseases of Modern Life 

maryofThe (^^^ edition, London, 1877. On Functional Disorders 
functional and Organic Diseases from Alcohol), gives the following 
and organic clcar and Comprehensive summary of diseases springing 
aSoT^'''"' from alcohol :— 

" The simplest form of the disease is seen in those who 
have become habituated to the use of alcohol up to the first 
degree. In this degree the alcohol, when in action, is pro- 
ducing arterial relaxation, and the extreme or peripheral 
circulation is surcharged with blood. Persons who are 
thus far habituated to it find in the agent what seems to 
them to be a daily necessity. They rise in the morning 
imperfectly refreshed by sleep, and they discover in the^ 
first meal of the day, in the ordinary breakfast of domestic 
life, a very imperfect sustainment. As the day advances 
some want is felt generally ; the stomach seems to require 
a fillip, the nervous system is languid, the mind is dull, and 
the muscles are easily wearied. There is, in addition, a 
sense of central feebleness, as though the heart were wait- 
ing for an expected and necessary support. Under the 
apparent necessity created by these desires, some alcohol is 
imbibed and relief is for the time obtained. The relief is 
speedily determinate, and the power for work or for play 
is restored. But the effect is of short duration ; after a 
brief period the alcohol is demanded again, either with or 
without food, and at each meal it is felt to be as essential 



PATHOLOGICAL RESULTS. 133 

as tlie food itself — nay, it is often felt to be so essential that 
food is as notking without it. 

" The first symptoms indicating the evil influence of Alcoholic 
alcohol are, as I have said, functional, and I may add, ^^p^p^^^- 
fluctaating. They are at first commonly called dyspeptic 
symptoms. The stomach and alimentary canal are sur- 
charged with gases ; and flatulency is a constahT source of 
annoyance. With this there is frequent depression of 
mind and ready irritation. The emotional centres are easily 
excited, and to laugh or to cry seems often to be but 
the work of a thought in act, and of a moment in time. 
The action of the bowels is irregular ; at one time there is 
a constipated, at another time a relaxed condition. The 
function of the kidney is equally disturbed. 

" Noises and ringing and buzzing sounds are heard in sensory dis- 
the head, now suddenly and for brief periods, a^ain for turbance 

, ,-' -li^i-rm n from alcohol. 

longer or even very long periods oi time. The cause oi 
these sounds is simple enough. The arterial tension being 
reduced, the blood flowing through the internal carotid 
arteries into the skull, through the bony channel called the 
carotid canal, presses on the walls of the relaxed vessel, 
dilated under the pressure of the blood, and conveys vibra- 
tion, from the pressure of the blood, to the walls of the bony 
canal. The vibration is communicated direct to the im- 
mediately contiguous auditory apparatus, and thus every 
movement of the blood becomes a murmur of sound, varied 
in intensity and quality by the varying tension of the 
artery. 

"The external surface of the body in this state is vascular 
easily affected and disordered. The vessels of the skin jJggfjQ^'^ 
are markedly relaxed when the influence of alcohol is 
re-excited by a renewed dose ; the face and ears redden, 
and the whole of the cutaneous surface seems in a glow. 
At first the vessels regain their calibre when the alcohol 
ceases to exert an influence on them ; but by-and-by, under 
the frequent repetition of the relaxation, the vessels begin 
to retain the unnatural change to which they have been 
subjected, and in the extreme parts, such as the cheek and 
the nose, they assume a distinctive appearance of confirmed 
vascular relaxation. For the same reason — deficient tonicity 
of the vessels — the cutaneous secretion is irregular ; a 
small amount of exertion creates a too free perspiration ; a 



134 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

little excess of covering to tlie body has tlie same effect. 
The perspiration is profuse, and, condensing quickly on 
the skin, as water, instead of going off in vapour with a 
warm glow, is clammy, heavy, and most oppressive. At 
times the secretion from the skin is extremely acid. 

" During this state eruptions on the skin are not un- 
frequent. An eczematous eruption occurring in some ex- 
treme parts, as the toes, and consisting at first of a slight 
vesicular rash, with, a thin fluid discharge, and afterwards 
with a scale which is cast off with much irritation, is one 
of the most common series of signs of the reduced nervous 
control over vascular supply induced by alcohol. 
Symptoms of " The temperate alcoholic, suffering a deterioration of 
systemic organic structure which he himself does not, perchance, 
recognize, but which is always present in him, in some 
form or degree, feels, as his years advance, other phenomena 
of disease. He detects too acutely changes of season. 
The summer is more than genial to him, it is life-giving ; 
the autumn is dreary, the winter depressing, and the first 
months of spring, with their keen easterly winds, are 
almost destructive. Neuralgic, rheumatic, or gouty pains, 
varied according to the diathesis of the man, tease or 
torment ; and at last, long before the natural period for 
cessation from active work has arrived, the man is an old 
man. His relaxed vessels are ready to give way under 
light pressure, and his life is ready to depart under 
natural shocks which to a man of healthy structure would 
be but as passing vibrations resisted by the force within 
tbe body and neutralized. 
Organic " Disease of the heart is a common organic malady 

diseases from incident to the alcoholic constitution of body. The form of 
Disease'ofthe disease is usually either a degeneration of the muscular 
heart. fibre — an interposition within the fibre of fatty substance, 

by which the true muscular elements are partially replaced ; 
or a degeneration produced from excess of fluid between 
the muscular elements. 

" In these states the power of the heart to propel the 
blood is enfeebled, and, although for a much, longer time 
than might be expected the heart responds to the agent 
that is destroying it, and continues to beat more freely 
when the extreme vessels are paralyzed and the arterial 
recoil is weakened, a time at last comes when the very 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 135 

absence of tlae recoil is tlie forerunner of death. For it is 
by the recoil of the great arteries that the heart itself is 
fed with the sustaining blood. 

"Disease of the blood-vessels is another phase of the 
organic disease from alcohol. This change, also a deteriora- 
tion of structure, may precede the changes in the heart, or 
may run with them. 

"In men whose hearts are principally strong, the 
vascular form of disease is often the first, and is the cause 
of death while the heart remains comparatively sound. 
The deterioration is, as a rule, in the arterial vessels, and 
may occur in them, either in their wider courses or in 
their minute or peripheral course. In the larger arteries, 
the change induced in the coats of the vessel may be a 
deposit, calcareous or bony-like, a thinning, a dilatation, 
or an atheromatous or fatty transformation of tissue. 
Whichever of these changes occurs, the result is that the 
vessel is weakened at the part, and the elastic coat of the 
vessel, upon the recoil of which so much depends, is 
rendered helpless. The arch of the great aorta, the basilar 
artery of the brain, the arteries of the heart itself, are 
parts of the arterial circuit very subject to this modifica- 
tion of structure from alcohol. Sometimes the diseased 
vessel becomes plugged with coagulated blood, and through 
it, then, no more blood can flow ; sometimes, under a little 
undue pressure, the vessel gives way, and the escape of 
blood, through the rupture, leads to rapid dissolution. 

" In the minute vessels — I mean the vessels that lie 
intermediate between the arterial trunks and the retorning 
veins — the changes produced are infinitely refined and 
subtle. It is probable that all the structural organic 
deteriorations from alcohol commence in this minute 
circulation in which the processes of nutrition are during 
health in active progress. 

"The sufferers from alcoholic phthisis are usually The lungs: 
somewhat advanced in life ; the average age has been forty- f^Ss!^ 
eight years. They are often considered healthy persons 
until they are stricken with the particular affection, and 
the figure and conformation of their bodies is good. They 
are not of the class of drinkers who sleep long, take little 
exercise, and grow dull, pale, and pasty -looking, but are 
those who take moderate or short hours of rest, go on 



136 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

actively througli their duties, and, primed by frequent 
resort to tlie spirit cup, live as mncli, work as nmch, see 
as mucli, and enjoy as mnch as they can. They are rarely 
intoxicated, but constantly are 'mellow.' Beer and thin 
wines are to them as water ; they can take strong wine 
ad libitum^ and even under strong spirit are less influenced 
than other men, nnless — to use the pitiful jest in which 
they indulge — they ' pile on the agony.' 

" For many years these sufferers, owing to a splendid 
conformation of body, may live apparently uninfluenced 
by any disease, in which respect they differ from alcoholics 
generally, and in fact are instanced by the votaries of 
Bacchus as men who drink deep and seem never the worse 
for drinking. 

" This wonderful health is, however, after all, apparent 
only. Questioned closely, it is soon discovered that the 
victims have long been out of health ; that a slight in- 
fluence, such as a cold, has easily depressed them; that 
subjected to unusual excitement or unusual fatigue, their 
balance of strength against exertion is weakened, and that 
an extra quantity of alcohol has often been wanted to 
bring them up to their required activity. Nevertheless, 
they pass for healthy men : they look healthy, and they 
retain their good looks to the last. The blotched skin, 
the purple-red nose, the dull protruding eye, the vacant 
stare, the alcoholic face of the complete sot^ is not traceable 
in them ; neither is the wan, pale, sunken cheek of the 
ordinary consumptive observable. The face, in short, is 
the best part of these subjects of alcoholic phthisis. When 
they are fatally stricken, often when their muscles have 
lost their power, and the clothes hang like sacks on the 
emaciated body, their countenance is still ruddy, and the 
expression firm ; so that friends, too ready to be hopefully 
deceived, believe in recovery when every chance of it has 
passed away. In some instances death is so quick from 
this disease, that the body generally is not greatly emaciated, 
but, like the face, conveys the deception of strength. There 
is no remedy whatever for alcoholic phthisis. It may be 
delayed in its course, but it is never stopped ; and not 
unfrequently, instead of being delayed, it runs on to a 
fatal termination more rapidly than is common in any 
other type of disorder. 



PATHOLOGICAL RESULTS. 137 

" Tlie organ of the body whicli most frequently perhaps The liver: 
undergoes structural changes from alcohol is the liver. I^i^^^*^^- 
The capacity of this organ for holding active substances 
in its cellular parts is one of its marked physiological 
distinctions. In instances of poisoning by arsenic, anti- 
mony, strychnine, and other poisonous compounds, we 
find, in conducting our analyses, the liver to be as it were 
the central depot of the foreign matter. It is, practically, 
the same in poisoning with alcohol. The liver of the 
confirmed alcoholic is probably never free from the in- 
fluence of the poison ; it is too often saturated with it. 

"The effect of the alcohol upon the liver is through 
the minute membranous or capsular structure of the organ, 
upon which it acts to prevent the proper dialysis and free 
secretion. The organ at first becomes large from the dis- 
tension of its vessels, the surcharge of fluid matter, and 
the thickening of tissue. After a time there follow con- 
traction of membrane and slow shrinking of the whole 
mass of the organ in its cellular parts. Then the shrunken, 
hardened, roughened mass is said to be "hob-nailed," a 
common but expressive term. By the time this change 
occurs, the body of him in whom it is developed is usually 
dropsical in its lower parts, owing to the obstruction offered 
to the returning blood by the veins, and death is certain. 

"The kidney, in like manner with the liver, suffers The kidneys: 
deterioration of structure from the continued influence of Calculus. 
alcoholic spirit. Its minute structure undergoes fatty 
modifications ; its vessels lose their due elasticity and 
power of contraction ; or its membranes permit to pass 
through them that colloidal part of the blood which is 
known as albumen. This condition reached, the body 
loses in power as if it were being gradually drained even 
of its blood. For the colloidal albumen is the primitively 
dissolved fluid out of which all the other tissues are by 
dialyfcical processes to be elaborated. In its natural desti- 
nation it has to pass into and constitute every colloidal 
part. 

"In the eyeball certain colloidal changes take place The eyes: 
from the influence of alcohol, the extent of which have as Cataract, 
yet been hardly thought of, certainly not in any degree 
studied, as in future they will be. We have learned of 
late years that the colloidal lens, the great refracting 



138 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

medium of the eyeball, may, like other colloidals, be. 
rendered dense and opaque by processes wbicli disturb the 
relationship of the colloidal substance and its water. By 
such process of disturbance the lens of the living eye can 
be rendered opaque, and the disease called cataract can be 
artificially produced. Sugar, and many salts in excess in 
the blood, will lead to this perversion of structure, and in 
course of time alcohol, acting after the manner of a salt, 
is capable, in excess, of causing the modification. In the 
eyeball, moreover, alcohol injures the delicate nervous 
surface upon which the image of all objects we look at is 
first impressed. It interferes with the vascular supply of 
this surface, and it leads to changes of structure which are 
indirectly destructive to the perfect sense of sight. 
Sleepless- "A perverted state of the vessels of the brain, and an 

°®^^' unnatural tension to which they are subjected from the 

stroke of the heart that is under the influence of alcohol, 
sets up oue telling and most serious phenomenon — I mean 
insomnia, inability to partake of natural sleep. 
Nervous " The brain and spinal cord, and all the nervous matter, 

aicohot*^^'^™ like other parts, become subject, under the influence of 
alcohol, to organic deterioration. The membranes en- 
veloping the nervous substance undergo thickening ; the 
blood-vessels are subjected to change of structure by which 
their resistance and resilience are impaired ; and the true 
nervous matter is sometimes modified, by softening or 
shrinking of its texture, by degeneration of its cellular 
structure, or by interposition of fatty particles. 

" These deteriorations of cerebral and spinal matter give 
rise to a series of derangements, which show themselves 
in the worst forms of nervous disease. 
Epilepsy " Epilepsy is but an extension of the spasmodic start, 

from alcohol, fpj^g seizure usually occurs at first in the night and during 
sleep, and may not be distinguished by the sufferer himself 
from one of many old attacks of what he probably calls 
' nightmare.' In time some evidence is left of it in form 
of bruise or bitter tongue. It is cured sometimes spon- 
taneously by simple total abstinence from alcohol. In its 
later stages it is, however, as incurable as any other type 
of this serious and intractable malady. 
Paralysis " Alcoholic paralysis developes itself in two forms of 

from alcohol, paralytic disease. It is in some instances local, affecting 



PATHOLOGICAL RESULTS. 139 

one limb or one side of the body, and leaving tbe will and 
the memory entire, or at most but sligiitly enfeebled. It 
is a paralysis that in a chronic manner runs counterpart 
with that deficient power of co-ordination of the muscular 
movements which marks the passage from the second to 
the third degree of acute intoxication. It comes on steadily, 
gradually, and for a long period seems, to the victim of it, 
to be temporarily relieved by the use of the agent that 
produces it. At last it is complete, and as a rule — to 
which rale nevertheless there are, happily, many exceptions 
— it is irrecoverable. The exceptions to the rule would, no 
doubt, be much more numerous if the injunction of the 
physician ' to abstain absolutely ' were not only duly 
enforced and solemnly promised, but faithfully carried out. 

" The second form of alcoholic paralysis is general in its 
development and accomplishment. It commences com- 
monly after a long stage of muscular feebleness, persistent 
dyspepsia, persistent foetor of the breath, and many other 
warnings, with thickness of the speech and general failure 
of muscular power. To these symptoms succeeds that 
alienation from the natural mental state, known as loss of 
memory. This extends even to forgetfulness of the 
commonest of things ; to names of familiar persons, to 
dates, to duties of daily life. Strangely, too, this failure, 
like that which indicates, in the aged, the era of second 
childishness and mere oblivion, does not at first extend to 
the things of the past, but is confined to events that are 
passing. On old memories the mind, for a limited time, 
retains its power; on new ones it requires constant 
prompting and sustainment. 

" If this failure of mental power progress, it is followed 
with further loss of volitional power. The muscles remain 
ready to act, but the mind is incapable of stirring them 
into action. The speech fails at first, not because the 
mechanism of speech is deficient, but because the cerebral 
power is insufficient to call it forth. The man is reduced 
to the condition of the dumb animal. The failure of 
speech indicates the descent still deeper to a condition of 
general paralysis in which all the higher faculties of mind 
and will are powerless, and in which nothing remains to 
show the continuance of life except the parts that remain 
under the dominion of the chain of organic or vegetative 



140 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing on 
alcoholic 
tremor. 



Scientific 
American 
on general 
diseases re- 
sulting from 
beer. 



nervous matter — the picture is one of breathing death ; of 
final and perpetual dead intoxication." 

In his Psycliiatrie (Stuttgart, 1883), Prof. Kraft-Ebing 
says of the distressing uncontrollable tremor attending 
habitual drunkenness — 

" The integrity of the motor-functions suffers early 
among drunkards. The most important, earliest, most 
frequent, most lasting disturbance is tremor of the 
voluntary muscles. It is most pronounced in tongue, lips, 
face, hands. It may, however, become wide-spread. ... It 
is remarkable that this alcoholic tremor, besides its form 
and general character, is most pronounced in the sober 
condition, and diminishes after partaking of alcohol. 

" It often develops at the beginning of the disease by 
reason of increased reflex excitability of the spinal cord to 
general convulsive movements and twitching in the calves. 
These occur especially at the moment of falling asleep, and 
next to the phantasms are the principal reason of the 
increased difiiculty in getting to sleep from which these 
patients suffer." 



As regards the general diseases resulting from the use 
of beers, I quote the following abstract from the Scientific 
American, published in the Tenvperance Record, July 5, 
1883 :— 

" For some years past a decided inclination has been 
apparent all over the country to give up the use of whisky 
and other strong alcohols, using as a substitute beer and 
other compounds. This is evidently founded on the idea 
that beer is not harmful, and contains a large amount of 
nutriment ; also that bitters may have some medical 
quality which will neutralize the alcohol it conceals, etc. 
These theories are without confirmation in the observations 
of physicians' chemists. The use of beer is found to 
produce a species of degeneration of all the organism, 
profound and deceptive. Fatty deposits, diminished circu- 
lation, conditions of congestion, perversion of functional 
activities, local inflammations of both the liver and the 
kidneys are constantly present. Intellectually a stupor 
amounting almost to paralysis arrests the reason, changing 
all the higher faculties into mere animalism, sensual, 
selfish, sluggish, varied only with paroxysms of anger that 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 141 

are senseless and bratal. In appearance tlie beer-drinker 
may be tlie picture of bealtb, but in reality he is most 
incapable of resisting disease. A slight injury, a severe 
cold, or shock to the body or mind, will commonly provoke 
acute disease, ending fatally. Compared with inebriates 
who use different kinds of alcohol, he is more incurable, 
more generally diseased. The constant use of beer every 
day gives the system no recuperation, but steadily lowers 
the vital forces. It is our observation that beer-drinking 
in this country produces the very lowest form of inebriety, 
closely allied to criminal insanity. The inost dangerous 
class of ruffians in our large cities are beer- drinkers. It is 
asserted by competent authority that the evils of her&dity 
are more positive in this class than from other alcoholics. 
Recourse to beer as a substitute for other forms of alcohol 
merely increase the danger and fatality. Public sentiment 
and legislation should comprehend that all forms of alcohol 
are dangerous when used." 

B. Mental Phenomena and Diseases. 

§ 47. The mental phenomena due to alcohol depend 
upon the physiological disorders produced by the alcohol 
on the nervous system, and in the degree of their violence 
and subtlety cause derangement in the manifestations of 
intelligence. 

Under the category of acute alcoholism science includes 
all those appalling, though apparently evanescent, pheno- 
mena which present themselves after alcohol has been 
swallowed. 

In his Alcoholismus (vol. ii., 1851), Dr. Huss, of Stock- Dr. Huss on 
holm, says, "Acute alcoholism may be divided into two ^^^*^ ,. 

"^ -, ci -i , "^ . XXI alcoholism. 

groups. I. buch symptoms as appear m persons at the 
time of intoxication, but who are not often intoxicated. 
2. Such as characterize the condition of those habitually 
intoxicated. The first condition is that of drunkenness ; 
the second is that of drink craze (^delirium, tremens^. In 
the condition of drunkenness three distinct degrees may 
be tolerably clearly discerned, in spite of the variations 
depending upon the amount and quality of the dose — the 
age, sex, temperament, and disposition of the drinker. 

" The first degree is marked by increased activity of 



142 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

several of the mental and bodily functions, increased 
temperature of the skin, which receives a richer colour, 
a keener sparkling of the eye, a stronger muscular activity, 
the movements being more lively and energetic, the pulse 
high, the heart-beats fuller, the mood easy, and both past 
and future fade, the present becoming all. This state is 
usually termed ' jolly.' 

"It continues for a short time, and then languor over- 
takes all the functions whose activity has thus been 
heightened. 

" The second degree is known by alternately depressed 
and exalted activity, morally as well as physically. The 
face becomes red, burning, and often blazing. The eye 
loses lustre, stares, sometimes in a feeble, inane way, some- 
times with a ferocious expression ; the ears are filled with 
rushing, ringing noises, the pulses of the temple and neck 
beat violently, the neck-veins are strongly distended ; feel- 
ings of faintness are experienced. The vision is blurred 
and confused, the tongue errant and stuttering, the heart 
throbs strugglingly, the voluntary muscles lose their 
elasticity, i.e., their" continuous elasticity; the walk is 
uncertain, stumbling and reeling ; the skin is hot and 
perspires, the secretion of urine is unusually great, the 
breath smells of alcohol, the intelligence is in a high 
degree disordered, and mistakes are made both in deed 
and word, which the sufferer barely, if at all, remembers 
when he returns to sobriety. 

" The third degree is characterized by a more or less 
complete suspension of intelligence, feeling, and power of 
motion. The face takes on a bluish-red hue ; the eye is 
staring and glassy, with distended pupil ; the breathing 
is a snoring and puffing with open mouth, from which 
often dribbles a frothy, blood-mixed saliva, stinking with 
alcohol ; the heart and pulses beat weakly, even to an 
almost imperceptible degree ; the skin temperature declines 
till finally it becomes cold and clammy. 

" The muscular system is so enfeebled that, if support 
is removed from the extremities, they fall down as would 
a dead mass, and so completely is feeling deadened that 
the hardest pinch is not felt, and both hearing and vision 
are. equally dulled. Consciousness is totally vanished, and 
full coma has taken place. This state of unconsciousness 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 143 

is what is meant hj tlie term ' dead drunk,' and may con- 
tinue for eiglit, twelve, even twenty-four hours, and some- 
times longer. 

" Though, after the first degree of drunkenness, the 
normal condition returns without marked results, it is not 
the case after the second and third degrees have been 
experienced. After awakening from these the head is 
heavy, sometimes faint and dizzy, aching and thumping, 
especially over the eyes, which are weak, expressionless, 
and bloodshot ; the tongue is coated, there is a bitter and 
disgusting flavour in the mouth, great thirst is felt, with 
aversion for food ; vomiting, a sense of tension in the pit 
of the stomach, foetid eructions, diarrhoea, and heavy de- 
pression and weakness of body and mind follow before the 
heart and pulse begin to beat firmly and normal health 
returns. 

" When death occurs from drink, the brain smells of 
alcohol, and is overfilled with blood, the lungs are packed 
with black blood, the heart and veins are sometimes filled 
with thick, and at times coagulated blood — all the same 
general signs marking death from narcotic poisons. 

" The second group of alcohoUsmus acutus is delirium 
tremens, or mania-a-potu " (described by Pliny as sleep 
agitated by furies). " To this state a person comes after a 
long use of alcoholic drinks, whether he has taken them 
periodically or steadily, and with or without the immediate 
results of being drunk. Indeed, a course of drinking w^hich 
has not resulted in drunkenness tends more directly to a 
final culmination in this dread disease. 

" The outbreak of this disease is usually preceded by 
gastric disorders for a longer or a shorter period, followed 
by insomnia, with inclination to fantasies. In other in- 
stances it breaks out suddenly without premonitions, but 
in such cases — with very rare exceptions — it has been 
provoked by some accidental causes, such as violent emotion, 
exterior hurt, great loss of blood, etc. 

" The characteristic manifestations of this disease are 
similar, consisting chiefly in insomnia, hallucinations, and 
trembling of the muscles. A certain unrest takes posses- 
sion of the whole being of the victim. He cannot keep 
his thoughts together, he is intensely irritable ; sleep dis- 
appears or is broken with visions ; the face and eyes assume 



IM 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing cjn the 
analogy of 
acute 

alcoholic in- 
toxication 
with 
insanity. 



a livelier seeming ; the hands, arms, and legs tremble in 
spite of his efforts to restrain this tremor, and at last the 
full delirium leaps forth. This may be continuous or 
intermittent ; is generally most violent at night and easiest 
during the forenoon. At its height it is violent frenzy, 
but at moments is a preternatural quiet or a burst of joy ; 
these spurious lulls being of all kinds and grades. This 
condition continues ordinarily for three, four, and some- 
times six or seven days, when it succumbs to sleep, which 
is critical, lasting for eight, twelve, or twenty-four hours, 
sometimes even more, and usually accompanied by profuse 
sweating. On awakening from this the sick man sees no 
visions, but feel^s clear in mind, though feeble and dejected, 
and is convalescent. In other cases this sleep is short, 
disturbed constantly with troubled visions, the powers sink 
more and more into collapse, and in this state death often 
closes the scene." 

Prof. Kraft-Ebing, one of the first of living authorities 
on insanity, describes (op. cit.) the relations between 
drunkenness and insanity as follows : — " Acute alcoholic 
intoxication furnishes by far the most striking analogy with 
insanity, at the same time the most comprehensive one, as 
it represents all the forms of the same. We find here 
all the forms of insanity, from the condition of slight 
melancholy — as intoxication sometimes produces it in the 
form of the so-called drmiken misery — up to those extreme 
states of complete cessation of psychical functions. The 
most severe form of insanity — ^paralytic dementia — is, 
under the form of intoxication, sometimes so completely 
copied as to be with difficulty distinguished. Strictly 
speaking, intoxication is nothing but artificial madness. 
In most cases, the first effects of alcohol are seen in 
slightly insane excitement. 

" All bodily and mental actions are increased, the flow 
of thought quickened. The taciturn become talkative, 
the quiet lively. A heightened estimate of self leads to 
boldness, bold behaviour, cheerfulness. A greater need 
for muscular movement, a true impulse for exercise, shows 
itself in singing, screaming, laughing, dancing, and all 
kinds of wanton and very often aimless acts. 

. " The laws of decency are still respected, form and 
manner are observed, a certain seK-control is exercised. 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 145 

But witli progressive intoxication a consecution of refined 
ideas and moral judgments whicL. control and influence the 
sane, are abrogated just as in maniacs. 

"At this stage the drunken man abandons himself 
entirely, reveals the defects of his character and his secrets 
(in vino Veritas), sets at defiance manners and decency, 
becomes cynical, brutal, arrogant, violent. Now he has 
also lost the capability of judging of his position — he con- 
siders himself just as little drunk as the maniac considers 
himself mad, and is offended if one makes a just diagnosis 
of his case. . . . There is a growing inclination to all the 
lowest forms of vagabondism ; brutal disregard of the 
rights and feelings of others, excessive sensuality and total 
shamelessness leading the drunkard to all sorts of profligacy 
in the open street; the craze for reckless purchase and 
equally instant and reckless destruction of what has been 
bought, and the revolting egoistic delusions in which the 
drinker fancies he is enormously wealthy, an emperor, or 
claims to be Christ or God Himself; and the tragical 
hallucination that he is pursued for the purposes of 
robbery or poison. 

"Finally, it comes to a state of mental weakness, to a 
loss of consciousness, a vanishing of the senses ; there 
appear hallacinations, illusion and confusion occur, and a 
state of deep idiotic stupor ; and just as with the paralytic, 
slobbering speech, staggering gait, uncertain movements, 
conclude the disgusting scene. The similarity between 
artificial and real insanity is further proved by the fact that 
sometimes — always where there exists a peculiar tendency 
to insanity — intoxication exhausts itself in the very 
beginning as acute delirium or transitory mania ; or even 
that a single intoxication produces immediate and lasting 
madness." 



Since the days of Dr. Huss, medical science has Dr. Mason on 
developed yet further divisions of acute alcoholism. In fnganity! 
Dr. Lewis D. Mason's* address on Alcoholic Insanity at 
the annual meeting of the American Association for the 
Cure of Inebriates (April 26, 1883), I find the following 
divisions of acute alcoholism : — 

* Consulting Physician, Inebriate Asylum, Fort Hamilton, Long 
Island, U.S. 

L 



146 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mania-a- 
potu. 



Character- 
istics. 



Examples. 



"1. Acute alcoliolic mania, or mania-a-potu. 

" 2. Acute alcoliolic delirium, or delirium, tremens. 

"3. Alcoholic epileptiform mania. 

" Mania-a-potu does not, as a rule, occur in the 
habitual drunkard, but in persons who occasionally drink 
to excess. The patient is unconscious of his acts during 
the paroxysm, and usually extremely ashamed and re- 
pentant." Ordinarily the attack is brief, but, " in exceptional 
instances, the person may remain maniacal for four or 
five days after a drinking bout. . . . There is no crime in 
the calendar that these alcoholic maniacs may not commit ; 
their reason is temporarily dethroned; they are uncon- 
scious of, not the character of their actions alone, but of 
the acts themselves, and are therefore irresponsible. 

" One characteristic of this mania is that the natural 
strength of the person may be greatly increased, and a man 
of ordinary physical development may thus become a giant 
in his alcoholic fury. . . . Another marked characteristic 
of mania- a-jpotu is that it is not preceded or followed by 
delusions or hallucinations, as other forms of alcoholic 
insanity are. The assaults are apparently motiveless, the 
frenzy cyclonic, in its oftentimes terrible results. . . . The 
following case occurred in my experience. 

" The person was a United States contractor, and at 
times received large sums of money from the Government. 
He was an occasional inebriate : during the period of his 
debauches he was very violent, dangerous to his wife and 
those about him, making assaults on every one. After the 
paroxysms of mania passed off, he was repentant, extremely 
grieved, and did all in his power to amend the evil he had 
done. After one of his fits of intemperance, in a mood of 
repentance, he sought to conciliate his wife by the ex- 
penditure of a large sum of money. He rented a villa on 
the Hudson, furnished it extravagantly, bought horses 
and carriages, and employed a retinue of servants, and in 
every way strove to make restitution for his past misdeeds. 
Some time after this — though not a lengthy period — he 
received a large sum of money from the Grovernment, and 
again went on one of his debauches, returning home a mad- 
man. He procured an axe ; his wife fled at his approach, 
and locked herself in a room at the top of the house ; the 
servants escaped to a neighbour's. The maniac had full 



PATHOLOGICAL KESULTS. 147 

control of tlie premises, and proceeded to demolisli the 
furniture. A grand Steinway piano was reduced to 
splinters, and ruin spread in every direction as his insane 
fury dictated. Fortunately, he met no one, or homicide 
would most certainly have been added to his acts of 
destruction. His wife eventually procured a divorce, and 
lie died in an asylum. His son became an inebriate, and, 
coming under my care, I was enabled to obtain the family 
history. 

" The son was a periodical inebriate, and, when under 
the influence of alcohol, was, like his father, a maniac, 
aggressive, homicidal, and with exceedingly dangerous and 
destructive tendencies." 

Dr. Mason also cites the following from tlie fourth 
annual report of the I^ew York State Inebriate Asylum 
(1866) : — "A young man in Madison Co. in this State, in 
the year 1857, while under the attack (jnania-a-potu) , killed 
his father and mother and cut out their hearts, which, he 
roasted and ate. He was arrested, thrown into prison, 
and indicted for murder. He was brought into court for 
trial, where Judge Gray, of the Supreme Court, stated that 
the case could not be tried, as there was no motive to 
prompt a man to commit such, a crime, and the man was 
sent to tlie Insane Asylum." 

" In acute alcoholic delirium, or delirium tremens,'" Delirium 
continues Dr. Mason — " the latter synonym being often a *'^^"^^'^^- 
misnomer, as tremor is not unfrequently absent," but, 
unlike mania-a-potu, is always attended by hallucinations 
or delusions — "optical delusions are present, and these its 
are readily misconstrued by a disordered intellect into all symptoms, 
kinds of forms and fantasies, horrible or grotesque. There 
is perversion of the hearing, and natural sounds receive 
undue importance, and are readily misinterpreted by the 
delirious patient. There is less perversion of taste and 
smell than of the other senses ; but the fact that the former 
may be perverted is of interest, as accounting, in some 
measure, for the delusion of poisoning so common in the 
more subacute and chironic forms of alcoholic mania. 

" The delirium is characterized by great changeableness its genorai 
of delusions, although there is one delusion of fixed pro- J'g^ticr**''^' 
minence to which all others are secondary. The perversion 
of the various senses form, or change, or direct the 



148 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. 

Maudsley's 
description 
of delirium 
tremens. 



character of the delusions, which are accompanied hj 
hallucinations of hearing, vision, and tactile sensation. 
Ordinary sounds receive undue importance, or are con- 
verted into terrible threats, the air is full of voices, visions 
constantly appear and disappear. Commonplace objects 
assume the form of demons or other horrid objects. 
Hyperaesthesia of the skin, perverted tactile sensation, gives 
the belief that insects are crawling over the integumen. 
Irregular chilly sensation and formication, or pricking 
sensations, are easily converted by the delirious patient into 
snakes, rats, or other vermin. The patient borrows his 
delusions largely from his surroundings, although all 
authorities agree that the avocation of the patient, or the 
last prominent act he may have engaged in, estabhsh the 
central delusion of his delirium. If his delusion partakes 
largely of personal danger, he makes repeated attempts to 
escape, and often effects his purpose with great cunning. 

" He will assault those about him in his attempts to 
get away, or if he imagines they are his enemies. These 
acts of violence are generally seen in the more maniacal 
form of delirium. Delusions of a melancholic character 
are not unfrequently present ; preparations are being made 
for his funeral, the table is a bier, the sheets are his shroud ; 
or he is to be drowned, or hung, or terribly abused in some 
way ; he begs for mercy, he prays for deliverance, and in 
a paroxysm of terror may commit suicide if not closely 
watched." 

In this connection Dr. Mason quotes the following from 
Dr. Maudsley : — 

^^ Delirium tremens might be described justly as an acute 
alcoholism, since there is a chronic alcoholism which is 
characterized by the slow and gradual development of 
similar symptoms ; in truth, a chronic delirium tremens 
which is called the insanity of alcoholism. Premonitory 
of it is the same sleeplessness, the same motor restlessness, 
the same nausea and want of appetite, that go before 
delirium treitnens. Instead, however, of the rapidly rising 
excitement, the changing hallucinations and delirious in- 
coherence then following, there is great mental disquietude 
with morbid suspicions or actual delusions of wrong in- 
tended or done against him, of wilful provocations and 
persecutions by neighbours, of thieves about his premises, 



PATHOLOGICAL RESULTS. 149 

of unfaitlif Illness on the part of his wife, and the like 
suspicions, which are frequently attended with such hallu- 
cinations of hearing, of sight, of tactile sensation, as 
threatening voices heard, insulting gestures or mjsterions 
signs seen, electrical agencies felt. In this state a yiolent- 
tempered man, resolved to be even with the scoundrels 
whom he declares to be persecuting him, sometimes does 
sad deeds of violence." 

Prof. Kraft-Ebing, in his book on Judicial Psycho- Prof. 
Fatholoqy rStutto:art, 1875), citesauthoritiesforsometerrible Kraft-Ebing 

^7^v_o'/' . . on crimes 

crimes committed under the hallucinations produced by committed 
drink ; for example, that of the murder committed by Thiol, akjohoUc 
a Grerman workman, industrious and orderly, and a most haiiucina- 
affectionate and loving husband and father. In a state oT" ^^'^^' 
drunkenness. Thiol was suddenly possessed by the idea 
that he ought to kill his child. He sprang from the bed, 
where this idea came to him, and, sinking in terror upon 
his knees, clasped his hands, and cried out, " Lord Grod ! 
Lord Jesus ! I must kill my child ! " But the poor wretch 
overcame this frenzy, patted the little fellow on the head, 
and bade him sleep. Soon after, the frightful temptation 
returned with overwhelming power ; he seized an axe and 
murdered the child, muttering agonized prayers and weep- 
ing bitterly as he did the deed, which at once sobered the 
miserable father. 

If drink can thus fearfully and totally pervert the 
affections, how terrible and subtle must be its effect on 
the whole moral being ? 

Of alcoJiolic epileptiform mania Dr. Mason says. Dr. Mason 
" There is no form of mania more dang-erous than that on ficoiioiic 

1-1 •! Mi_- 1 • n T 1 epileptiform 

which occurs m the epileptic when mnuenced by alcohol ; mania, 
it matters not whether his epilepsy be directly due to 
alcohol or to other causes. . . . He is most dangerous 
because ' he adds to the impulses — sometimes so terrible — 
to which he is subject from his disease, those which he 
draws from intoxication.' " 

The symptoms in chronic alcoholic insanity are divided 
by Dr. Mason into several groups. 

He describes the first — chronic alcoholic mania — chronic 
maniacal type — homicidal tendencies — as " one of the most alcoholic 
dangerous types of mania that is met with, especially 
when the mental alienation is not ushered in or accom- 



150 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH, 



Its 
symptoms. 



Chronic 

alcoholic 

melancholia. 



Its painful 
delusions. 



panied by a febrile condition, or otber symptoms that* 
usually point out a departure from health. He is therefore 
not regarded as a sick man by his friends, although they 
may think he acts a little ' queer ; * he is moody, taciturn, 
he whispers his suspicions, he picks out his special enemies, 
he prepares himself against assault, carries weapons on 
his persoD, or conceals them in a secret place, he broods 
over his fancied wrongs ; finally, times and place suit his 
purpose, the revengeful design he has been nursing for 
months and hinting about to his immediate acquaintances 
now finds an outlet, and the press publishes a case of 
" murder in cold blood ; " his history by degrees comes 
out, experts are summoned, his true condition is ascer- 
tained, and he is sent to an asylum. One very common 
delusion is that of marital unfaithfulness ; some one, 
generally a near acquaintance who is on visiting terms 
with his family, is selected as the one who has destroyed 
the sanctity of his hearth and home. Too often his insane 
delusions are treated as simply jealousy, but it is a morbid 
jealousy of the most intense character, and will in its insane 
fury take the life of some innocent victim. It is a good 
rule not to take the homicidal vagaries of an intemperate 
man as a matter of trifling importance, but when he 
breathes out — it may be threatening and slaughter, 
although it may be in an undertone — let him be promptly 
arrested and examined as to his sanity." 

Of chronic alcoholic wielancholia — suicidal tendencies — 
Dr. Mason says, " The patient is depressed, weeps readily, 
to a certain extent he is confidential, seems to crave sym- 
pathy. He will follow you about, and ask your aid against 
supposed evils that are impending over him. I recall 
one case where the patient believed that his funeral 
would take place in a few hours. He could hear people 
preparing for it ; he begged me to delay, if possible, the 
ceremony ; he was exceedingly sorrowful and depressed. 
The delusions are various ; persons dead are living, and 
the living are dead. Events that have happened long 
since are being re-enacted. Delusions as to locality, as I 
have said, are often marked. The delusion of poison in 
the food or drink is oftentimes a very troublesome one. 
Such, persons, however, will take ale or other stimulants 
when they refuse food, a perversion of taste being the 



PATHOLOGICAL EESULTS. 151 

probable cause of this form of delusion we have referred 
to. This delusion is usually subsidiary to more prominent, 
or leading mental aberrations. The central or prominent 
delusion is the first to come, the last to leave. As his 
disordered intellect rights itself, he clings to this often- 
times persistently, and finally, when his reasoning powers 
return, he listens to argument, and gives up his delusions 
as a fallacy. It is a curious fact, as in the case we have 
mentioned, that in subsequent attacks or relapses the 
same delusions so prominent in previous attacks return, 
and remain with the same persistency." 



It would seem as if the intelligent and thoughtful 
would find in the manifestations of the simplest forms of 
drunkenness alone, an all-suflB.cient warning against the use 
of alcohol. Yet these are but the first signals in a series 
of warnings so terrible that, in view of them, it is truly 
surprising that alcoholism ever became a universal ill ; or 
would be so, did we not in this very fact discover one of 
the worst effects of the evil — the stultifying of moral 
sensibility. 

In the mental phenomena included under the head 
of alcoholic insanity, we find that the physical channels 
for the expression of intelligence have been so corroded 
and mutilated by alcohol, that the communication between 
body and mind becomes always partially, sometimes 
wholly, vitiated, and what is left of it so perverted, that 
the alcoholic has practically reversed the " descent of 
man " — has dropped himself to a plane where morally the 
beasts are above him. And still greater than the evil thus 
done to himself and those around him, is that which he 
does to succeeding generations in transmitting this curse. 



152 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



CHAPTER yil. 

MOEAL RESULTS. 

Inquiry into § 48. One of the most difficult point s to settle in the 
between investigation of the drink question is that of alcohol as 
drink and ^ cause of Crime. That drink is a chief cause of crime 
is disputed not only by those who wish to prevent 
the truth from being known, but also by some of those 
who really wish to know the truth ; and such marshalling 
of accurate data, philosophical research, medical and 
psychical analysis, as would take it out of dispute, has 
not yet, it seems, been adequately brought to bear upon 
it. If, as the judges of criminal courts affirm, and as 
facts everywhere seem to confirm, drink is the chief 
cause of crime, it is of the first importance that a know- 
ledge of this fact should be grounded in the popular mind, 
as it would undoubtedly and naturally do more than any- 
thing else to convince the general public of the real scope 
and character of the drink evil. The importance of this 
is emphasized at intervals by the publication in reputable 
journals of ingenious documents, which by omitting the com- 
parative data, necessary to a correct understanding, and by 
erroneous deductions, convey impressions wide of the truth. 
Erroneous One example will suffice in illustration. In the Pall 

a writer in Mall Gazette (Nov. 9, 1883) appeared the following : — 

the Pall Mall 

Gazette,^OY. " Is DrINK THE ChIEP SoURCE OF CrIME ? 

9, 1883. 

" A correspondent writes to us as follows on the subject 
of intemperance and crime : — 

"It is by no means an unusual circumstance for judges 
at assizes and recorders at courts of quarter sessions, while 
addressing grand juries, and deploring the increase of 



MORAL RESULTS. 153 

crime, to speak of its close relationship witli intemperance, 
regarding the one as th.e sure harbinger of the other. If 
the accepted theory be true, the districts where drunken- 
ness more extensively prevails would be the most prolific 
in crime, and drunkenness and crime would rise and fall 
in the social barometer in equal degrees. Is it so ? Let 
us see. 

" The residents of the rural districts of Durham are 
more prone to habits of intoxication than those of any 
other county in England, and this evil, unfortunately, is 
on the increase. In 1879 the number of persons charged 
by the county police with the offence of drunkenness was 
7178; in 1880 the number was 8088; in 1881, 9124. 
The number of crimes committed in the same districts 
was, in 1879, 549; in 1880, 414; in 1881, 426. While, 
therefore, drunkenness has been increasing, crime has been 
decreasing, and while the charges of drunkenness for the 
year amount to nearly fifteen for every thousand of the 
population, the crimes only reach 0*7 per thousand.* The 
people of Essex may be considered the most sober of all 
the inhabitants of the country. The charges for drunken- 
ness last year numbered 289, or 0*9 to every thousand. 
The number of crimes committed there numbered 455, or 
nearly twice the number of charges against persons for 
drunkenness ; but in Durham twenty persons would be 
charged with drunkenness to one charged with a crime 
that would be necessary to be tried by a jury. Pro rata 
with the population also crime is twice as extensive in 
Essex as in Durham. , 

"Northumberland is another county where intemperance 
runs high, yet the number of crimes committed by the 
rural population was in 1879, 76. In 1880 the number 
was 102 ; and in 1881, 67, or 0*3 per thousand of the 
population. In 1879 the number of persons charged wdth 
drunkenness by the police was 1916 ; in 1880, 1967 ; in 
1881, 2145 ; so that here also, while drunkenness has been 
increasing, crime has been decreasing. Bedfordshire is 
another county where drunkenness exists to a very limited 
extent. The number of persons charged here with drunken- 
ness in 1879 was 232 ; in 1880, 206 ; in 1881, 176, or 
equal to 1*7 for every thousand of the population. The 
* See testimony of Justice Hawkins in chapter X. 



154 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

crimes committed liere were, in 1879, 76 ; in 1880, 82 ; 
in 1881, 102 ; or equal to 1*0 per thousand — so that crime 
is three times greater in Bedfordshire than in Northum- 
berland." 

The writer goes over Lancashire, Shropshire, Sunder- 
land, etc., in the same manner, and suggests at the close 
that — 

" It would be an easy matter to multiply the number 
of these illustrations to show that the close relationship 
between drunkenness and crime is a fallacy, and that the 
real source of crime exists in some influence, or some 
failing in moral rectitude, outside that which leads to 
intemperance." * 

* Eef erring to this document in the Pall Mall Gazette, the Alliance 
News (November 17, 1883) says — 

" In some police districts large numbers of drunken cases are 
dismissed without being taken formally before the magistrates. 
This especially prevails where such cases are in overwhelming 
abundance. Moreover, as a rule, in districts where drunkenness is 
most abundant, the tone of public feeling against it is apt to be most 
relaxed, and the disposition to regard tipsy noisiness as a peccadillo 
not worthy the notice of the police is pretty sure to be most preva- 
lent. In such districts Watch Committees and magistrates are often 
personally implicated in the liquor traific, and naturally fail to en- 
courage their servants, the policemen, to be strict to mark and severe 
to seize. Where mayors, aldermen, and other leading public men are 
addicted either to liquor-selling or to liquor-tippling, even their 
silent inflaence will always act as a damper on the zeal of the con- 
stable. Hence it commonly happens that where there is most 
drunkenness the number of apprehensions by the police tends to 
dwindle, whereas these are likely to be more numerous where public 
opinion is most widely awake to the enormity and iniquity of the 
liquor traffic. Considerations like these are quite sufficient to show 
the folly of using the police books of different districts in proof of the 
comparative drunkenness of those districts. For the rest we need 
only add that when the judges protest, as earnestly as they are 
always doing, that most of the crime that comes before them officially 
is evidently caused by strong drink, they speak not in view of the 
number of police apprehensions of drunkards, but in direct recognition 
of the plain and undeniable facts that present themselves to their 
senses in dealing with criminal cases in their own courts. To doubt 
the correctness of their conclusions on such a matter is equivalent to 
writing down some of the most able men in the kingdom as poor, 
brainless, chattering fools." 

I may add that the deference due to such statements as those 
made by the Pall Mall Gazette's correspondent must equally be due 
to statements of precisely similar scope and grasp ; as, for instance, 



MOKAL RESULTS. 155 

These figures miglit mislead very many wlio are not 
specially and amply informed upon the subject, and not 
familiar with the various data, or the way in which such 
data essentially affects computation, comparison, and 
deduction.* 

This " correspondent " challenges the almost unanimous 
testimony of the principal judges of the United Kingdom 
— a testimony covering scores of years of experience — that 
drink is the chief cause of crime. In this challenge one of 
two things is plainly intimated : either that the Judicial 
Bench of Grreat Britain have been and are fools or knaves ; 
either these men, whose business it is to inquire into the 
causes of crime and to pronounce the verdict of law upon 
the criminal, have been, and are, all incompetent, or else 
have deliberately deceived the public. Certainly no sober 
Englishman will admit the former ; and as to the latter, 
it would be difficult to discover or devise a motive, or a 
combination of motives, sufficient to induce even one — 
still less a long succession of judges — to concur in such 
a misrepresentation. Even were judges constitutionally 
prone to misstatements, no public body could be less 
interested in doing so, on the topic in question. 

In stating the increase in arrests for drunkenness during 
the last three or four years — since the temperance agita- 
tion has become vitally a popular factor — the Pall Mall 
correspondent does not manifest any knowledge of the 
well-known fact that the laws against drunkenness in 
public have been enforced with increased vigour during 
this period, in various parts of the United Kingdom. Yet 
this fact is essential to an approximately accurate com- 
parison of the general relations between drink and crime. 
For instance, during the reign of Queen Anne, when 
intoxication was regarded as a feat rather than a degrada- 

those of a recent writer on the Topography of Intemperance (Mac- 
millaris Magazine, Jan. 1882), wlio naively alludes to " this singularity 
in both towns and counties, that generally the larger number of 
public-houses will be found where there is the smallest amount 
of drunkenness, and ... in Durham drunkenness prevails to a far 
greater extent than in any other English county." Ergo, make the 
people sufficiently and unanimously drunk and there will be no crime ; 
multiply public-houses and there will be no drunkenness ! ! ! Durham 
seems on the whole a most remarkable county ! 

* See opening remarks of chapter X. concerning statistics. 



156 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Relations 
between 
Bobriety and 
crime as con- 
trasted with 
the same be- 
tween drink 
and crime. 



Examples of 
unintentional 
alcoholic 
criminality. 



The quality 
of drunken- 
ness shown 
to be 

dependent on 
the kind of 
drink used, 
and on the 
tempera- 
ment and 
circum- 
stances of 
the drinker. 



tion, and hardly any one was arrested for it ; crime was 
terribly prevalent — what would this correspondent have 
deduced from statistics of the relations between drink and 
crime then ? 

However difficult it may be to demonstrate the exact 
relations between drunkenness and crime, there is happily 
not the same difficulty in establishing the relations between 
sobriety and crime ; of a hundred persons in the dock, 
few, if any, are total abstainers ; and the relations between 
sobriety and the absence of crime is being daily practically 
demonstrated on. various prohibition estates, as at Bess- 
brook in Ireland, etc. 

So far as I have been able to pursue investigation on 
this point, I have been specially impressed with the 
following facts. 

Crimes are not often conceived or committed during 
actual drunkenness, though often very dreadful ones do 
result from the negligence and oblivion of drink ; such as 
the sea captain commits, when an overdose of grog makes 
him steer his ship on dangerous reefs ; or the engineer, 
whose extra glass means a mismanaged engine, a collision, 
and the mangling and killing of people trusted to his care ; 
or the drunken officer, when he muddles the order of his 
commander, and prematurely or altogether mistakenly 
exposes his men to slaughterous fire ; or the drunken 
physician, whose reckless prescription or whose total 
neglect results in the death of some beloved one and the 
blasting of dear human hopes ; or the drunken lawyer, 
who tipples away the life, honour, or property of his 
helpless client. 

The quality of drunkenness depends greatly on the 
nature of the intoxicant used, as well as upon the tempera- 
ment and physical condition of the drinker. For example, 
it is well known that drunkenness occasioned by malt 
liquors generally induces a sluggishness of mind, a lethargy 
of the senses, to which frenzy or ferocity in thought or 
act, to which the formation of a plan, or execution of 
one previously conceived, are almost impossible. 

It must be remembered, however, that the effect of 
malt liquors is greatly determined by the quality of the 
hops and the presence or absence of cocculus indicus or other 
adulterating ingredients. In an article on Beer and 



MORAL RESULTS. 157 

Crime (Medical Times and Gazette, London, April, 1872), 
the following statement with regard to beer occurs : — ■ 
" Its intoxicating power is far greater than can be ac- 
counted for by the mere alcohol it contains. . . . Cheap 
and coarse varieties of the hop, a plant nearly allied to 
the Indian hemp or bhang, may be capable of producing 
a furious delirium quite apart from alcoholic intoxica- 
tion. ... A magistrate's clerk once told us that the 
worst assaults and crimes of violence in his district were 
men who drank at public-houses supplied by one particular 
brewery." 

Wines — with the exception of the strongest and most 
viciously adulterated — generally cause an idiotic jollity, 
silly good-humour, meaningless generosity, coupled often 
with a kind of loose frankness of sensuality. Brief choler, 
-sufficient for the commission of sudden crimes, is possible 
to this condition, but evil designs previously harboured are 
unlikely to recur or be carried out. 

On the other hand, spirituous liquors,* especially those 
containing quantities of fusil oil — such as raw whiskies, 
gin, etc. — excite almost invariably a demon-like frenzy, 
and when thus intoxicated, people who in a sober state 
would neither conceive of, nor countenance violence, lust, 
or destruction of property or life, become capable of any 
imaginable infamy and crime. 

These distinctions, which deserve most careful atten- The true 
tion, and a large variety of sub- distinctions and differen- Jfc^^oiic^^^^*^ 
tiations, are necessary to any proper comprehensive criminal 
estimate of the relations between drinking and crime. ^'^ ^^^ ^' 
But the general truth remains, that not in the drunken 
state, but in the various intermediary stages between 
sobriety and intoxication, lies the field of alcoholic criminal 
activity. 

§ 49. It has been seen in the foregoing pages how General 
alcoholic drinking lowers the whole plane of physical health ; pi^sk-iogicai 
that it ruins digestion, poisons the circulation, making it and mental 
sluggish, as in the amphibious creatures ; that it preserves 
waste tissue and checks excretion, — making the human 
body, so to speak, a case or cask of preserved compost ; 

* " Beer is bratalizing ; wine impassions ; wliisky infuriates, but 
eventually unmans." — Dr. Bock, of Leipsio, in article on the " Moral 
Effects of Food and Drink," in British Medical Journal (1879). 



158 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

that this internal condition is presently externally adver- 
tised in disgustiug clianges of tlie countenance and bearing ; 
that the nervous system after continued over-excitation 
becomes eccentric and fitful in its action — small causes 
putting it to the highest tension of irritability, v^hile great 
reasons for excitement are regarded with apathy ; that 
these derangements are attended v^ith baleful visions, 
impure fantasies, weariness with self and disgust with 
life ; the whole hydra evil culminating in idiocy, insanity, 
and temptations to and commission of all kinds of crimes 
and sensualities, theft, incendiarism, suicide, and murder. 

Thus, in one terrible group we have the physical and 
mental results of alcoholism inextricably involved with 
the moral results, one causing the other and vice versa, in 
a system of consecutive inseparable reactions— a banyan 
tree of human misery. 

" Other vices," says Dr. Hufeland, in his work on 
Poisoning by Brandy (1802), "admit the hope of amend- 
ment, but this performs its work of destruction thoroughly, 
and without the prospect of remedy, for it extinguishes in 
the system all susceptibility for remedy," and indeed all 
consciousness of the need of such susceptibility. 

I remember once reading a fable to this effect : — Once 
there was lying by the side of a ditch, a pig. On the 
other side lay a man. The pig was sober, the man was 
drunk. The pig had a ring in its nose, the man had a 
ring on his finger. Some one passing exclaimed so that 
the pig heard it — " One is judged from the company he 
keeps." Instantly the pig rose and went away. 

As the alcohol-poisoned body, in its need for its life- 
essential — water — takes more and ever more of the poison 
that creates but never slakes that thirst, so the alcohol- 
poisoned mind — in its need of the pure medium for its 
manifestations with which it was originally endowed — all 
clouded and astray, plunges deeper and deeper into all 
forms of reckless, coarse excesses, its hope for ever mocked 
by its own rudderless drifting continuance in sin-begetting 
sin. 

For though body and spirit are distinct, yet in this life 
and for this life's purposes they are indissoluble, man 
having no expression beyond the manifesting power of the 
physical mechanism he dwells in. Thus it is seen once 



MOKAL EESULTS. 159 

and for all that a physical effect is a moral effect. As the 
sap in the tree permeates to the least curl in the least 
rootlet, and so determines what the tree shall be in the 
air, so whatsoever permeates man's physical system de- 
termines in kind and degree the manifestation of his 
spirit. 

But in saying that a physical effect is always a moral A notable 
effect, one great exception must be made by marking the this^ruie^ 
distinction between harm voluntarily and harm arbitrarily 
incurred. For example, an upright man, clean in mind, 
heart, and habit, who would not of himself under any 
temptation abuse his body, or ignore those rights of others 
invested in its purity, may in many ways be forced to do 
so through poverty, by exhausting labour, bad air, and 
poor food ; or through wanton caprice he might be bound 
hand and foot, and have alcohol poured down his throat 
till he was " dead drunk," — and instances for my meaning 
might be multiplied ad infinitum from facts. 

In these cases the body suffers just as much as if the 
abuses had occurred by the consent of the will, but the 
mind and character do not — a beautiful evidence of the 
existence in the body of a tenant superior to and distinct 
from itself. 

Of course such arbitrary injury could be inflicted, 
could extend over such a period as to undermine the moral 
force, but the very fact that it takes time and much time 
to do such devil's work as this, only serves to point my 
distinction. 

But wherever a physical effect is produced by the will's 
consent, we may look for the moral result in kind, and at 
last for the most deplorable of all results — in the extinction 
of will either to consent or reject. 

In his Confessions, Charles Lamb, one of the brightest charies 
of gentle spirits ever extinguished in the baleful fires of ^^^^g^?, 
alcoholism, wrote : — warning. 

" Could the youth, to whom the flavour of his first 
wine is delicious, look into my desolation, and be made to 
understand what a dreary thing it is when a man feels 
himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a 
passive will — to see his destruction and to have no power 
to stop it, and yet to feel it, all the way, emanating from 
himself ; to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and 



160 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise — to- 

bear about the piteous spectacle of self- ruin ! " 

The effect of § 50. The chief power by which we attain and maintain 

on th?wm. ^^""^^ womanhood and manhood is the power of will, of 

sane decision. And this power is the first stronghold to be 

attacked by alcoholism. If alcohol were a sentient being, 

it could hardly act with greater apparent intelligence than 

it does in its insidious sapping and mining of the will, as 

if it knew, that redoubt once carried, no further resistance 

need be feared. In this subjugation of the will, alcohol 

incidentally but very remarkably defines the distinction 

between will and intention — so often mistaken for each 

other, to the moral shipwreck of the mistaking ones. 

Difference Will forms and carries out intention, but intention is not 

between will ,_.•] i 

andinten- "'^^^' ... . _ 

tion. ("The In alcoholism the will is destroyed, and intentions — 
fspavedwUh ^^^^ the arrows in a slain chieftain's quiver — become the 
s^^"* . „ passive agents of the victor's bow. 

—Martin ' Is there a more contemptibly pitiable sight than that of 

Luther.) j^^q will-less drunkard, who, with half-drained glass in his 
shaking hand, assures you that it is " hizh 'ntenzhn to 
shtop drink'ng " ? 
Instance of Dr. John Cheyne, of Dublin, in A Statement of Certain 

drhikT''*'^ j^/ec^s of Temperance Societies (1829), cites this remark- 
annihiiate able instance of the thraldom of drink, especially in its 
the will. power to keep down the once conquered will. A gentleman 
of birth and refined tastes, deservedly popular for his 
attractive qualities, became habitually intemperate. A 
dear friend wrote to him, " Your family are in the utmost 
distress on account of this unfortunate habit. They see 
' that your business is neglected, your moral influence is 
gone, your health is ruined." To this he replied, "Your 
remarks are indeed too true, but I can no longer resist 
temptation. If a bottle of brandy stood on one hand 
and the pit of hell yawned on the other, and if I knew 
that I would be pushed in as surely as I took one 
more glass, I could not refrain. . . . You are all very 
kind. ... I ought to be grateful, . . . but spare your- 
selves the trouble of trying to reform me; the thing is 
now impossible." 

Man's will being destroyed — facilis descensus Averni, 
and that " Hell is the shadow of a soul on fire," becomes 



MOKAL KESULTS. 161 

the actual experience of the tempest-exliausted spirit, and 
in that gloomy shadow the panic-stricken family of the 
drunkard leads a rayless cowering life, more dreary than 
Christian's in the Valleys of Humiliation and the Shadow 
of Death — and there is no Great-heart to bear the poor 
wife and mother company — to teach or defend the hapless 
children. 

As son, citizen, neighbour, husband, father, and friend. Moral in- 
the drunkard is insolvent ; his responsibilities in all these the^driSker 
relations are like obligations discharged by spurious notes, in the 
first consciously — for he is not a sot at once — afterwards rSponsi- *^*^ 
mechanically offered. His mother! Does he remember Miitiesof 
the never-weary love, the gentle, watchful care and service 
and self-sacrifice, which rounded his young life day by 
day ? Nay, to get a quartern of whisky he would pawn 
the bed on which she lies dying. 

His fellow-citizens, his neighbours, his friends ! Why, citizen, 
they are persons to be borrowed from, if they will lend ; to and^Me^d'- 
be stolen from, if they won't ; to be chicaned, cheated, 
cajoled, worried, and wearied into giving the means for 
drink — almost always on pleas of a chance that can only 
be secured by a little ready money (for drones and knaves 
are cunning in the use of pleas which could honestly be 
urged by the deserving), a dodge deceiving neither; and 
the meanness of the drunkard in these relations, grafts a 
reflex meanness and sense of guilty partnership upon the 
one who helps him down. 

The drunkard's wife ! Is she a being to cherish, watch Husband 
over, and serve as a sane man finds his happiness in ^-ii'i father, 
doing ? Oh no, a victim to vent all his unleashed and 
degraded passions on, to cheat, to wheedle, to poison, to 
make into a penny- earning drudge, and to beget poisoned 
offspring from. 

There is the reverse side, where the wife is the one 
who drinks away her intelligence, and sinks into the 
deepest mire of degradation, neglecting her husband and 
her children, destroying love, respect, and hope, bringing 
her family to want and despair, and keeping them there. 

Such a home is the most miserable spot on earth— it 
is more wretched than the home where all are drunkards, 
for the contrast between the vain efforts and piteous hope- Su^Ln^wife 
lessness of the husband and father striving as he does to and mother. 

M 



162 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

retain liis own manhood, to be mother as well as fatter, 
to his helpless children, and the complete and obstinate 
resistance of the besotted companion and spoiler of his 
days — is one to make the stoutest hope for the race falter. 
To snch a home comes the weary father from his work at 
night — to see the dirt and the disorder he was forced to 
leave unremedied in the morning — grown worse for the 
orgie of the day — to see the children huddled away from 
the mumbling, blear-eyed, towzled, filthy- smelling heap on 
the straw, which is all they know of motherhood, and all 
he will ever know of wifehood ; wailing for food, or too 
cold to wail, or perhaps stupefied from fear, or perhaps 
sucking at the half -drained bottle which has fallen from 
the mother's palsy-loosened clutch, too stunted and 
blunted to be glad to see him, even though he brings them 
the only food and the only care they ever get. 

This is as much worse than where the father alone is 

the drunkard, as the degraded woman is a worse and lower 

creature than the degraded man. Worse, too, because to 

womanhood and motherhood God has given the dominating 

moral effectiveness, whether for good or evil. 

As con- And in the drunkard's home, where the faithful wife 

the^saml^ and mother bears her burden without sinking into the sin 

home when -which causes it, you will see something of the meaning of 

mother bears home savcd to him and his family, something of the clean- 

?npatiem!e^ liness and system which produce some kind of daily 

and sobriety, routine, a time for and a semblance of daily meals, however 

meagre the fare ; the little ones are washed and combed, 

and, as far as may be, saved from the worst contact of the 

slums, where the father's sin locates the home ; and often 

- in one or more of the children you will see a wonderful 

moral force and power of sympathy and helpfulness, by 

which the unfortunate mother's steps are stayed, and her 

heart saved from utterly breaking ; for whatever poison 

the child has received from its father, the mother's love 

and virtue has also entered in to combat — to transmute, 

and, if not to eradicate, at least to prevent its gaining 

the supremacy ; and often it seems that the mother's 

character has been able to wholly form and infuse that of 

the child, confining the evil birthright bestowed by the 

erring father to the child's stunted and crippled body. 

E-arely indeed are such signs of hope found among the 



MORAL RESULTS. 16S 

offspring of the debaucTied mofher, whatever the father may 
be, and in those rare cases it is generally found that such 
children were born before the mother had become degraded. 

And how terrible in its deprivations is the curse entailed 
by the alcoholized father on such children as the mother's 
virtue has partially saved, not only the hospitals — ^with their 
bedridden little forms, always painfully wistful, and often 
lovely little faces — but the streets, with their misshapen 
figures of malformed and half-limbed, wan-faced, and pre- 
maturely old children bear witness. 

Oh, fathers and mothers in pleasant homes, where 
want and its temptation have never come, whose little ones 
are rosy with health and innocent sheltered happiness, 
whose fair white shapes, clear radiant eyes, soft eager 
voices, and kisses dew-pure, fill you with delight and 
reverence, and make you understand at least why He 
should say, " Of such is the kingdom of Heaven ! " Oh, 
take heed, take heed for those other wronged and defrauded 
little ones who are worse than motherless, fatherless, and 
homeless, and for their sakes, and that such as they may 
no more be called out of the darkness into yet darker life 
— for these surely good and loving reasons put away — and 
be first in putting for ever away from your lips, and your 
homes, and your example — this one indulgence, not missed 
from among your luxuries, that by your easy and self- 
benefiting sacrifice you may enter into such fellowship 
with the humblest as will rebuke, inspire, and sustain 
them. For what we have done unto the least of these, 
that alone shall we be able to take with us to speak for us 
when we have left all the possessions and all the distinc- 
tions of this world behind. 

§ 51, Though there are grades and varieties of alcoholic The gradual 
degradation, and all do not sink equally low or manifest like ^^^ final" ^ 
degrees and kinds of lusts, ferocities, or bestial indifference, destruction 
yet the dark picture given is the true picture of the ^ ^ a^a-cter. 
general effect of alcoholism on the moral being of man. 
And if we closely study the details which make this dark 
whole, we shall see more and more of the subtle and 
intricate ways by which the loss of will unravels the 
character stitch by stitch, till it has neither form nor 
significance, and is but a limp thread trailed hither and 
thither by the fitful winds of temptation. 



164 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The clever 

disguises 

assumed 

by the 

alcoholized 

will. 



In political 
life. 



In the rela- 
tions between 
master and 
man. 



For thongli alcoholism always undermines the will, the. 
degree in wMcli it does so is determined by the mental 
quality and temperament of the drinker, and the extent to 
which he carries the habit. So that in some instances 
moderate drinking has totally undermined the will, while 
in others, excessive drinking has only partially oyercome 
this power. In all cases, however, the will is so far 
sapped that every relation in life is more or less tainted 
with the dry-rot of unreliability. 

The loss of will by alcoholism has many deceiving 
forms, often takes on the shape of good-natured concession, 
as in the politician who, even while believing in the true 
principle, and wishing well to the right measure in the 
issue at stake, succumbs to the first sufficient urgency, 
without regard to his own convictions, is called obligiug, 
and thinks himself so, but in reality yielded because 
resistance was not in him. This is a negative action of 
will-lessness, very multiform in its phases, very widespread 
and vitiating in its effects on social and political life. 

But there is another kind in which all will but self-will 
is gone. The politician in this case is morally nil ; he 
does not even negatively lean toward integrity, he cares 
only to gain some higher position, some more sounding 
honour, some larger pay, and sells his vote and buys as 
many of the votes of others as he can for the gaining of his 
end, promising anything and everything without the 
faintest intention of carrying it out. He is spoken of as a 
man of iron will, sure to make his way, to carry his object, 
and he thinks himself a man of strong will. He is only an 
egoist, morally unable to resist, or even to hesitate at, any 
evil whereby his selfish aim is assured. 

Alcoholism comes in to spoil the relations between the 
master and the working man. 

The drinking working man, no matter how skilled and 
clever in his workmanship when sober, cannot claim the 
full wages of his skill, beca.use he cannot be relied on, and 
his master is always on the look-out for a sober and steady 
skilled artisan, with whom to oust and replace the drinker. 
The latter may work well for many days, but suddenly one 
morniDg he comes into the shop, and in three minutes has 
blundered away material worth a week's wages, or by his 
derangement of the machinery some luckless comrade is 



MORAL RESULTS. 165 

cut in pieces, or, if furious instead of maudlin, he has in 
a few minutes smashed more than he can make good in 
weeks or months of labour. And jet, again, is missing for 
days when work is pressing and hands cannot be spared. 

The master who drinks, even though he be what is 
called a moderate drinker, is thereby a tacit patron of all 
this unreliability, and himself illustrates it, often failing to 
carry out special promises to his men, thinking he will, 
but lacking will-power to do more than think and promise, 
and his unreliability further vitiates the relations between 
master and man. In every relation in life alcoholism, 
whether slowly or swiftly, surely destroys all certainty but And in 
the certainty of disaster and downfall, for the individual, s^^^^^^ ^^^®- 
for governments, for the race. 

The tragedies and crimes to which alcoholism leads are Alcoholism's 
as various as the moral unreliabilities which are the first gradations 

from moral 

steps towards crimes. unreii- 

The crimes are not committed only or most frequently to turpitude 
during actu«i~i3j:unkenness, but as the results of a long and crimes, 
course of the drinking habit which has sapped the will, 
ossified the heart, paralyzed the conscience. 

The forger must be sober, but to be capable of forgery The forger, 
he must — perhaps not in all, but in most cases — have been 
morally emasculated by drink, or have inherited the 
absence of moral perception and moral force which 
alcoholism brought about in his progenitors. 

The burglar must be wary and cool, but alcohol and its The burglar, 
effects must have gone before, either in him or his fathers, 
ere he can choose this sort of livelihood. 

The murderer lying in wait for his victim is cool — but The 
somewhere in him or his fathers the demon of drink has "murderer, 
persuaded him that gold is worth blood purchase. 

On the other hand, these same crimes and various 
others are also committed not in coolness nor in ferocity, 
even when deliberated, but from inability to resist the 
pressure of circumstances made up of goading needs, 
stimulated and supplemented by sudden or gradually 
augmenting temptations. In these two distinct orders of 
criminals, guilty of precisely the same crimes, we see the 
action of the loss of moral will in its two forms : the The negative 
negative loss, which may exist with painful longings to be 
better without power to even determine to try ; and the 



166 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The positive 
loss of will. 



Eev. Chan- 
ning on the 
difference 
between 
poverty with 
and without 
drink. 



positive loss, whicli means absence of tlie moral will, i.e.,- 
of desire to be good and true, as in avarice, cold-blooded 
murder, and savage lust. Prof. Kraft-Ebing says that 
the drinker loses clear sense of what is honourable, moral, 
and decent, grows indifferent even to such conflict between 
good and evil within him as remains possible ; indifferent 
to the ruin of his family, to the contempt of his fellow- 
citizens ; and that hand in hand with these results goes 
that of increasing irritability, until his violent tempers 
burst out without provocation and become literally un- 
governable. 

In associating the evils of intemperance with the evils 
of poverty, we are apt to think of them as identical, and 
the poverty as almost the worst of the two. 

R-ev. William Ellery Channing, in his address on 
Temperance, in Boston (1837), thus ably discriminated on 
this point : — 

" Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own 
sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These 
consequences owe their chief bitterness to their criminal 
source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard 
carries into his family. But take away his own brutality, 
and how lightened would be these miseries. We talk of 
his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue ; but 
suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. 
Suppose the drunkard to have been a virtuous husband 
and an affectionate father, and that sickness and not vice 
has brought his family thus low. Suppose his wife and 
children, bound to him by a strong love, which a life of 
labour for their support and of unwearied kindness has 
awakened ; and suppose them to know that his toil for 
their welfare has broken down his frame ; suppose him 
able to say, * We are poor in this world's goods, but rich 
in affection and religious trust. I am going from you, but 
I leave you to the Father of the fatherless and to the 
widow's God.' Suppose this, and how changed these 
rags ! How changed the cold naked room ! The heart's 
warmth can do much to withstand the winter's cold, and 
there is hope, there is honour, in this virtuous indigence. 
What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife is not that 
he is poor, but that he is a drunkard. 

" We look too much at the consequences of vice, too 



MOEAL RESULTS. 167 

little at tlie vice itself. It is to be desired that when man 
lifts a suicidal arm against his highest life, when he 
quenches reason and conscience, that he and all others 
should receive a solemn startling warning of the greatness 
of his guilt ; that terrible outward calamities should bear 
witness to the inward ruin which he is working ; for the 
outward evils, dreadful as they seem, are but faint types of 
the ruin within. We should see in them Grod's respect to 
His own image in the soul, His parental warnings against 
the crime of quenching the intellectual and moral life." 

In the sacredness of family life — as the foundation Thefounda- 
and perpetual well-spring of human worth, happiness, and {Juman 
progress ; in the incorruptible faithfulness of men and happiness, 
women, not to their pleasures and impulses, not even to progress. 
their individual aspirations, but to their plain daily duties 
and responsibilities towards others, — whether these duties 
have been voluntarily assumed or by circumstances forced 
upon them — in these things in this conduct of life — though 
personal hopes may be lost — manhood and womanhood 
infinitely more precious than any personal gain, remain 
pure and eif ective ; and childhood — the most direct and 
solemn of all the trusts a gracious God reposes in us — ^is 
protected. 

It is only when the passion of love is separated — 
wrenched from its citadel and source in the crystal sphere 
of modesty and true, deep affection where divine wisdom 
planted it, to live for ever and be the for ever fresh and 
for ever sweet inspiration to all human loyalties ; it is only 
when selfishness and insidious self- betrayal outrages and 
dislodges it, that it is lost out of Grod's meaning and 
purpose, and becomes the sensual fury which goads men 
and women to break all ties, all fidelities ; to forget what 
honour is like, and grovel weakly in, or ferociously gloat 
over, the degradation of all that is meant by the good 
words " love " and "home." 

And it is here in the home-world, the heart- world, that Drink the 
drink, having subjugated the will, confused and gradually enemy of 
obliterated moral distinctions, comes at last to its chief prey, these. 
the affections, the emotions, the passions, and does the most 
deadly, the most ruinous — because the most irreparable — of 
all its fell work. In its blight the man who wooed with 
fervour and wedded with pure intent, parts first, slowly, 



168 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

witli self-respect, and tlien more rapidly witli all other, 
respect, and sells or forsakes liis wife, as callous. to her 
anguish — yes, actually becomes as incapable of under- 
standing it as of caring for it — as he is indifferent to the 
coarseness of the vile women he consorts with in her 
stead ; or, worse, he makes his wife a physical sharer in 
his own pollutions, regardless of the result to her or to 
the children who may inherit. Brothers traffic in the 
honour of their sisters ; some men gamble literally with 
their wives for the stakes, or pledge their daughters for 
cash to the lowest libertine that can pay — yes, and act as 
the decoy in fulfilling the atrocious pledge ! * Finally, as 
the circle narrows, as the lusts exhaust themselves, the 
alcohol- driven wretch slinks more and more into the lowest 
haunts, where unimaginable forms of sensuality submerge 
him at last in imbecility, whose fainter and fainter gleams 
of consciousness consist of impotent throes of the degraded 
senses. Then total darkness, and the results of the work 
of alcoholism are complete. 



Of course, in dealing with a great, widely prevailing 
evil, only the general sum of its effects can be presented 
in any one work of ordinary dimensions ; and it is under- 
stood that this sum comprises almost infinite variations of 
kind, of method, of degrees, of effect that may not be 
categorically specified. 

For example, in showing that drink destroys will, moral 
perception, conscience, affection, self-respect, and regard 
for others — in saying, in a word, that the drinker sinks 
into lower than bestiality until the final extinction of all 
manliness, I am not asserting that every taster of wine 
sinks to the lowest level, or that any one or all of these 
evil results is at once and strongly manifested in every 
drinker. If this were so, surely no books need be written, 
no pledges taken, no prayers be made, no tears be shed 
to save man from alcoholism. That which is asserted 
is, that drink tends, however slowly and insidiously, and 

* Cardinal M'Cabe, in a recent pastoral on the state of Ireland, 
speaks of the degraded men and women " who, that their fierce 
passion for drink may be satisfied, would sell wife, husband, or child 
to any one who would minister but for a day to their insatiable 
cravings for drink." 



MORAL RESULTS. 169 

with whatever delay of apparent signs, in every case to 
these results ; if persisted in, manifests them in more or 
less marked degrees, that the danger of the worst sqnarely 
menaces whoever forms the habit, and that in a frightful 
numerical proportion this worst has been and is being 
daily realized all around us. 

"At what particular point does any man cease to be 
sober and begin to be drunk ? What quantity or strength 
of alcohol may one imbibe with the perfect assurance of 
retaining the sober equilibrium of all his faculties ? How 
long may one be accustomed to a very moderate daily 
quantity of wdne or spirits without incurring any danger 
of forming an appetite for strong drink ? These and other 
such questions cannot be answered, because there is no 
line discernible, and no ingenuity can calculate where or 
when the line is crossed which separates moderation from 
excess, sobriety from drunkenness. 

" There is a point indefinitely near the starting point 
of unmistakable sobriety, and yet some distance from it, 
where a slight derangement of the mental powers, a little 
dimness of intellectual vision, some lack of tenderness in 
conscience, some relaxing of the power of will — all im- 
perceptible, it may be, to others — become at least suspected 
by the individual himself . . . but while it would be 
uncharitable and rude in the estimation of society, and 
libellous in the eye of the law, to call this by the name 
of drunkenness ; yet, call it by what name we will, it is 
a departure from strict absolute sobriety, and an incipient 
movement along the line which leads to the grossest 
intemperance. The higher nature has begun to lose, and 
the lower to gain influence and strength ; it needs but a 
little more impetus in the same direction, it needs but 
the same process repeated sufficiently often to create the 
drunkard's appetite, and to procure the drunkard's name. 
A start has already been made along that line which is so 
thickly strewn wdth the wreck of much that was great 
and noble lying in accumulated masses of degradation, 
wretchedness, and crime." * 



I have avoided exaggeration ; I have kept well within 

* Temperance Reformation, and its Claims upon the Christian 
Church, by Rev. James Smith (London, 1875). 



170 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

tlie bounds of tlie truth wMcli my researches have un- 
expectedly revealed to me ; I have purposely refrained 
from citing from the multitudes of proved and certified 
instances of the worst evils as I have described them, lest 
. by too greatly shocking and even stunning the sensibilities 
of my readers I should thwart my hope of helping to 
arouse deep feeling and genuine sustained effort to com- 
prehend and overcome this, the worst, the secretest, the 
stealthiest, bloodthirstiest, cruelest, and strongest fiend that 
has ever got into the hearts, the homes of men — to arouse 
this feeling and this purpose in every heart this little book 
reaches, as this feeling and purpose have been aroused in 
mine. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HEREDITY, OR THE CURSE ENTAILED ON DESCENDANTS BY 
ALCOHOL. 

A law of ancient Carthage forbade all drinks but water on days 
of marital intercourse. 

" Drunkards beget drunkards." — Plutarch. 

" The children of drunkards are not likely to have sound brains." 
— Gellius, 

" Dipsomania is always hereditary, always a spontaneous neurosis, 
absolutely independent of the habits of the individual." — Dr. Folle- 
viLLE. — See Quarterly Journal of Inebriety (October, 1883), p. 260. 

§ 52. The perpetuation of the human race, together with the 
extinction of what is valueless to it — whether individual, 
family, tribe, or nation — are closely regulated by laws which 
in themselves manifest the profoundest wisdom. 

On the laws of heredity especially, a seal is set which The laws of 
no man can completely violate ; i.e., though he may infringe proSS w 
upon and disregard all other general laws of his being, the race. 
until to all intents and purposes they cease to be carried 
out, the laws by which he bequeaths himself to new 
generations will continue to effectuate themselves even 
after he has lost the mental and physical individuality 
through which the general laws act. 

Were we insulated in our individualities instead of Theresponsi- 
being intimately interdependent, we might do harm to parentage, 
ourselves and deny all right of interference or even 
remonstrance from without : but since in nothing can 
we act without producing an endless consecution of effects 
touching the lives and rights of others ;— in nothing can 



172 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

we have so little right to act without the thoughtfullest, 
most unselfish regard to the claims of others, as in the 
chief act for which we are qualified — the act of creating 
a new being who shall partake of our essence in himself 
and transmit the same, whatever its quality, to untold 
successive generations. 

For we are pre-eminently parents ; the race lives only 
in the possible motherhood or f attierhood of each individual, 
and the desire for children and devoted attachment to them 
is the most ineradicable feeling and deepest fundamental 
law of all healthy mature being. 

Therefore, to what end the laws of heredity shall be 

effectuated, is the foremost question which concerns us as 

responsible beings. 

Dr. Marc ^^- ^^rc Lorin, in his General View of the Laws of 

Lorin on the Heredity (Thesis for the degree in medicine, Paris, 1875), 

of heredity. SayS : 

" The transmission of characteristics of species and 
race is admitted by everybody who deals with the body or 
the soul, Nobody fears to admit within these limits the 
fatality of birth. It is thus that every historian refers to 
the national character in explaining the events in the lives 
of a people, recognizing its persistence, and pronouncing 
the consequences often inevitable. The French of this day 
recognize themselves in the portrait of the Gauls as drawn 
by Julius Caesar. The modern Greeks are in many respects 
the same whom Demosthenes addressed. If you take a 
young savage whose parents were hunters, vain will be 
your efforts to cultivate him and adapt him to the habits 
of civilized life. The voice of his ancestor speaks to him, 
incessantly recalling him to the instinct and adventures of 
forest life. 

" Heredity is the result of a very general law, by 
virtue of which all the anatomic elements of the body 
possess the property of giving direct birth to similar 
elements, or of determining in their own vicinity a genera- 
tion of elements of the same kind (Littre et Robin). The 
phenomena of nutrition depend upon this same law, by 
virtue of which the human body, incessantly renewed, 
remains always identical with itself from the distribution 
of atomic elements." 
Dr. Bourgeois Dr. Bourgeois, in L' Amour (1860), says that — 



HEREDITY. 173 

" In transmitting the germ of life, parents transmit to 
their children their own resemblance, physical and moral. 
The children are parts of ourselves; it is our flesh, our 
blood, our souls, our examples, our lessons, our passions 
which re-live in them." 

Dr. E. G. Figg, in his Physiological Operation of Alcohol Dr. Figg. 
(Manchester, 1862), says — 

" Is organic conformation transmissible to posterity ? 
In our bitter experience we know it is. Half a dozen 
brothers and sisters perish in phthisis, and the physician 
explores the antecedents of the family for the origin of 
the catastrophe. A man drops dead with valvular disease 
of the heart, and on the transit of a few years the accident 
is repeated in the person of his son, simply because the 
basis of the disease was communicated in an organ 
defectively constructed. 

" And is a cerebral conformation less hereditary than 
tubercular diathesis, or cardiac imperfection ? The very 
breeders of horses insure docility in the progeny, by the 
existence of that quality in the parentage. Consider the 
mental vigour manifested in various families, generation 
after generation. The Gregories, the Alisons, the Sheridans, 
the Kembles, the Porters, the Munros ; if talent be in- 
herited, it can only be conveyed with the peculiar cerebral 
structure exhibiting it." 

Although the ephemeral traits of the parents may The scope of 
seldom reappear in the children — only that which has effects!^"^^ 
become individualized being generally transmitted — yet 
we constantly have evidence that even general undefinable 
tendencies of our being, upward or downward, are trans- 
missible ; yes, even the struggles and conflicts in the inmost 
hearts of the parents, though never by them revealed, may 
all, whether well or iU fought out, be reflected in the child. 
And it is within the working of these laws that we find 
intoxicants, especially alcohol, endangering — as does almost 
no other evil — the whole future of the whole race of man ; 
and to the startling words of Flourens, " Man no longer 
dies, he hills himself,''^ we may add, — Man not only kills 
himself ; he kills his offspring in the womb, and degrades 
that heaven-ordained crucible of life into a machine for 
creating mental and moral and physical monstrosities — for 
the spurious replenishment of the earth. 



174 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Various 
authorities 
on heredity. 

Erasmus 
Darwin. 



Kev. Edward 
Barry. 



Dr. Rosch. 



Dr. Morel. 



§ 53. Tlie Frencli historian Amyot, and the English 
philosopher Lord Bacon, were probably the first in modern 
times to deal with the question of alcoholic heredity. 

Erasmus Darwin, in his Botanical Garden (1781), 
says, "It is remarkable that all the diseases from 
drinking spirituous or fermented liquors are liable to 
become hereditary, even to the third generation, gradually 
increasing, if the cause be continued, till the family 
becomes extinct." 

In his Essay on Wedlock (Eeading, 1806) the Rev. 
Edward Barry says — 

"It would be as unreasonable to expect a rich crop 
from a barren soil, as that strong and healthy children 
should be born of parents whose constitutions have been 
worn out with intemperance and disease. What a dreadful 
inheritance is the gout, the scurvy, etc. ! How happy 
had it been for the heir of many a great estate had he 
been born a healthy beggar rather than to inherit his 
father's fortunes at the expense of inheriting his disease ! 

" Children born of intemperate parents bear in their 
birth the germs of disease, die prematurely, or drag along 
a languishing existence, useless to society, depraved and 
possessed with evil instincts." 

A like testimony is this of Dr. C. Rosch, in his The 
Abuse of Spirituous Drinks (Tiibingen, 1839) : 

" The children of men and women who are given to 
drink have always a weak constitution, are either delicate 
and nervous to excess, or heavy and stupid. In the former 
case they often fall victims to convulsions and die suddenly, 
or become a prey to water on the brain, and later to 
pulmonary phthisis. In the latter case they are seized by 
atrophy, and sink into imbecility. In both cases they are 
exposed to all the varied forms of scrofula, rash, and, on 
reaching maturity, gout." 

Dr. B. A. Morel, in his treatise on the Degeneration of 
the Human Race (Paris, 1857), says of alcoholic heredity, 
" There is no other disease in which hereditary influences 
are so fatally characteristic. Imbecility and idiocy are 
the extreme terms of the degradation in the descendants 
of drinkers, but a great number of intermediary stages 
develop themselves, . . . beyond the positive data afforded 
by observation of hereditary influences, it is impossible for 



HEREDITY. 175 

US to form a just idea of certain monstrosities, physical 
and moral. ... It is a law for the preservation of the race, 
which strikes alcoholics witli early impotence, and their 
descendants are not only intellectually feeble, but this 
degradation is joined witb congenital impotence." 

Dr. Figg says (op. cit.), ^^ The hrain of the drinkers Dr. Figg. 
child is as often the miniature of that of his father, as is the 
impress of his features. Education may do much for him, 
conscience and self-respect more ; yet the germs of those 
vices wbich. precipitated the parent's ruin will, in too many 
instances, defy eradication. 

" Perhaps tbe largest class of character is one to wbicli 
no special reference has hitberto been made — a persoji 
possessing a mediocrity of mental power, with a mind only 
partially developed by education, conversing superficially 
on a number of subjects, without thinking deeply on any ; 
such characters are admirably adapted for the routine of 
mere commercial or artisan life. By constant drinking, 
however, even without reaching the point of intoxication, 
such intellects may be almost obliterated. To them 
reasoning was never habitual, consequently the cerebral 
surface, under the contact of alcohol, is less injected than 
the base ; hence the function of the intellectual brain is 
completely superseded by that of the instinctive ; their 
very few ideas, suggested by the society of the public- 
house, or the sentiments current round the dinner tables 
on the retiring of the ladies, admit of no variation or 
argument. What wonder that they become social non- 
entities, and assimilated to the beasts in their desire for 
the gratification of mere animal appetites ! " 

Dr. E. Lanceraux says, in his article Alcoholism dt, Lance- 
(Dict. Encycl. des Sciences Med., Paris, 1865), " The person ^^ux. 
who inherits alcoholism is generally marked with degenera- 
tion particularly manifested in disturbances of the nervous 
functions. As an infant he dies of convulsions or other 
nervous disorders ; if he lives, he becomes idiotic or 
imbecile, and in adult life bears these special characteris- 
tics : the head is small (tendency to microcephalism), his 
physiognomy vacant, a nervous susceptibility more or less 
accentuated, a state of nervousness bordering on hysteria, 
convulsions, epilepsy, sad ideas, melancholia, hypochondria, 
— such are the effects, and these with a passion for alcoholic 



176 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. 

Maudsley. 



Professor 
Jaccoud. 



Dr. Baer. 



Dr. Gendron. 



an inclination to immorality, depravity, and 
cynicism, are the sorrowful inheritance, which, unfortunately 
a great number of individuals given to drink bequeath to 
their children." 

Dr. Maudsley says that such children " come into the 
world without having either the will or the strength to 
struggle against their fate ; they are step-children of 
nature, suffering under the heel of tyranny — the tyranny 
of poor constitutions." 

Prof. Sigismund Jaccoud says, in his Alcoholism (Patho- 
logie Interne, Paris, 1877), " Of the children of drinkers, 
some become imbeciles and idiots ; others are feeble in 
mind, exhibit moral perversion, and sink by degrees into 
complete degradation ; still others are epileptics, deaf and 
dumb, scrofulous, hydrocephalic, etc. ... A survey of the 
race leads us to affirm that alcoholism is one of the greatest 
causes of the depopulation and degeneration of the 
nations." 

Dr. A. Baer (in AlcoTiolismus, 1878) calls attention to the 
fact that " the inherited desire for drink often remains 
latent, till by severe, acute, or chronic disease, or mental 
excitement, the nervous system has become weakened, 
when tbe alcoholic impulse leaps suddenly into activity." * 

In his essay on Hereditary Alcoholism (Thesis for the 
degree in medicine, Paris, 1880), Dr. B. Gendron says, 
" The drinker is often incapable of having living children. 
If he does have any, they are driven to drinking just as 
lie himself, and, being less robust, because degenerated, 
they cannot withstand the effects, but fall victims to all 
the accidents of alcoholism, united to those they have 
inherited. These are — in tender years, terrible convulsions 
on the least occasion ; later, nervousness of hysteria with 
all the train of symptoms ; limited intelligence, gross 
brutal character, and a spirit incapable of anything serious 
or coherent. The heir to alcoholism is querulous, evil- 
minded, possessed with a desire to destroy, not capable of 
receiving a good education ; and his faults increase with 



* The age at which symptoms of hereditary alcoholism break out 
varies. It generally awakes at special periods of physiological 
changes ; such as puberty, illness, pregnancy, or at the cessation of 
the menstrual functions. Sudden and great mental emotion, or even 
chill, will sometimes suffice. 



HEREDITY. 177 

liis years. If born intelligent, he may lapse into idiocy or 
imbecility ; born with infantile paralysis, he may die from 
epilepsy ; or, a hypochondriac, he may become insane, and 
end his wretched existence in an asylum under the 
delirium of imaginary persecutions ; if, indeed, he has not 
been carried to the prisoner's dock for some crime for 
which he bore little real responsibility.* . . . The conclu- 
sions are that alcoholism is not extinguished with the 
drinking individual, but is transmitted to his descendants 
under various forms, namely, convulsions in infancy, pro- 
duced by the most trivial causes ; malformation of the 
head and microcephalus ; tendency to strong drink ; feeble 
general development ; trembling especially of the upper 
limbs ; gastric troubles ; epilepsy ; precocious perversity 
and cruelty ; mental weakness ; idiocy ; tendency to in- 
sanity or mania." 

In his address, The Seredity of Alcohol, delivered ijr. Norman 
before the International Congress for the Study of Alco- 
holism at Brussels (August, 1880), Dr. Norman Kerr 
said, " Defective nerve-power and an enfeebled debilitated 
morale form the favourite legacy of inebriates to their 
offspring. Some of the circle, generally the daughters, 
may be nervous and hysterical ; others, generally the 
sons, are apt to be feeble and eccentric, and to fall 
into insanity when an unusual emergency takes place. 
That the impairment of the bodily or mental faculties 
arises from the intemperance of one or both heads of the 
family, is demonstrated by the healthfulness and intel- 
lectual vigour of children born while the parents were 
temperate contrasted with the sickliness and mental 
feebleness of their brothers and sisters born after the 
parent or parents became intemperate. . . . The most dis- 
tressing aspect of the heredity of alcohol is the transmitted 
narcotic or insatiable craving for drink — the dipsomania 
of the physician — which is every day becoming more and 
more prevalent. Probably the alarming increase of the 
alcoholic heredity in England is owing in great part to the 
increase of female intemperance amongst us. It is well to 

* If a sound knowledge of tlie laws of heredity were a sine qua 
-non qualification in the law-maker, might we not hope that curative 
measures would supersede the punitive and inangurate a nobler and 
more effective moral code than we have ever known ? 



178 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Lewis D. 
Mason on 
alcoholic 
insanity. 



Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing on - 
diseases of 
alcoholic 
heredity. 



state that all the evil resulting from hereditary alcoholism 
may he transmitted hy parents who have never been noted for 
their drun'ken7iess. Long- continued habitual indulgence in 
intoxicating drinks to an extent far short of intoxication is 
not only sufficient to originate and hand down a morhid 
tendency, but is much more likely to do so than even repeated 
drunken outbreaks with intervals of perfect sobriety between.^^ 

The hereditary drink-crave is thus described by Dr. 
Lewis D. Mason in his Alcoholic Insanity (I^ew York, 
1883) : " It is an irresistible impulse that drives a person 
to alcoholic intoxication at stated or irregular periods. 
The attack is preceded by a condition of melancholia, 
anorexia, insomnia, and general restlessness. After the 
debauch, or during it, the special effect of the alcohol on 
the mental and physical condition becomes manifest — ■ 
tremor, hallucinations, sleeplessness, coated tongue, loss 
of appetite, and other symptoms of gastric derangement. 
The ' irresistible impulse ' is the characteristic feature of 
this special form of monomania. The genesis of that 
impulse, and the views of various writers as to its 
pathological origin, the province of this paper will not 
permit to touch. 

" The point to be made here is that the hallucinations 
and delusions are simply the result of the alcoholic 
poisoning. 

" The person again and again yields to the insane 
impulse until death, either by some intercurrent disease, or 
disease resulting from his alcoholic excesses, relieves him 
from his sad heritage." 

Of the children of parents who are guilty of alcoholic 
excesses,* Prof. Kraft-Ebing, in his Psychiatric (Stutt- 
gart, 1883), says, "They come into the world as idiots, 

* One of the laws of heredity of the utmost importance for 
parents to consider is that of what I may call lacteal heredity (see 
chapter IX.), i.e. what the child receives through the medium 
of the milk, whether the milk of its mother or of a wet nurse. 
Virtues, vices, physical characteristics, and the effects of habits 
indulged in during lactation can be transmitted to the child. Thus, 
even if the child be well-born to start with, it may acquire physical 
diseases through the milk of a foster-mother. 

The Pall Mall Gazette for August, 1883, tells the following 
interesting anecdote bearing on this point : — 

" The extent to which the character of an animal can be changed 



HEREDITY. 179 

with liydroceplialons or neurotic-convulsive constitutions ; 
and perish in early years of convulsions. In those who 
survive, epilepsy, hysteria, mental diseases, and weakness, 
and exactly the severest forms of mental impairment are 
developed out of the morbid constitution of the nerve- 
centres ; " and he gives the following terrible scheme as 
to how nature disposes of generations springing from 
drunkards : — 

" 1st Greneration. — Moral depravity, alcoholic excess. 

"2nd Generation. — Drink mania, attacks of insanity, 
general paralysis. 

" 3rd Greneration, — Hypochondria, melancholia, apathy, 
and tendencies to murder. 

"4th Greneration. — Imbecility, idiocy, and extinction of 
family." 

Thus it is seen that even the transmission of such 
loathsome diseases as scrofula, tuberculosis, or syphilis is 
neither so certain nor so permanent and blasting in effects 
as those transmitted by alcoholism. Moreover, these 
terrible diseases are in some degree susceptible of remedy, 
and are localized. But the heredity from alcoholism is 
chronic, and profoundly attacks the whole being. 

Were tbe transmission absolute, that is, were there no 

by the way in widch it is bronght np has seldom been more re- 
markably illustrated than in the case of a sheep, which at present 
is said by the KoTcstaad Advertizer to be a great pet of the magistrate 
at Matabiele, in South Africa. This sheep, when a lamb, left the 
flock, attached itself to a Mr. Watson, who gave it to be suckled by 
his bitch ' Beauty,' a bitch well known here, and was well taken 
care of by her. When the lamb grew older it was noticed that it 
would never sleep in any house but Mr. Watson's, and would some- 
times lie outside the door cuddled up like a watch-dog. The most 
wonderful thing about him is that as soon as the hotel bell rings for 
dinner he is sure to be standing by one of the chairs at the top end 
of the table, and when the owner sits down he will jump with his 
front paws on his back, letting him know that he wants something 
to eat, like a dog. He will not touch grass or eat beef, but will 
gladly eat mutton, soap, candles, and drink coffee and tea with 
sugar and milk. But " Schaap's " great love is for draught beer. 
He will lift the can up with his front paws and hold it to his mouth, 
and drink with such a relish that it can at once be seen he has been 
led away by bad example. ' Schaap ' is a fine ram, clean fleece, 
with very wicked eyes. All day he is seen running about with the 
dogs as one of them, until the bell rings, then off he scampers to the 
dining-room." 



180 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

laws miglitier for tlie preservation of man than those lie 
violates and turns into engines of destruction, the race 
might ere this have been extinguished. But the children 
of drinking parents who escape the curse are the excep- 
tions, and the escape is seldom, if ever, a complete one. 
Either the mind, the body, or the character, in some bent, 
formation, or trait, betrays the taint. 

Selfish and irresponsible conduct of life minus drink 
may, and probably sometimes does, produce a similar 
heredity ; yet it remains true that those who are neither 
alcoholics themselves, nor the victims of alcohoHc parentage, 
are in the comparison seldom sufficiently blinded to the 
meaning and duties of Hfe, to waste their physical, moral, 
and mental resources, and then either heedlessly or 
deliberately inflict the consequences on their offspring. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THEEAPEUTICS ; OE, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 

§ 54. As alcoliol (the distilled product) originated in tlie 
chemists' and physicians' laboratories, thence gradually 
spread to the homes of the favoured ones in life, and then 
descended step by step the grades of social life, until its 
use in drink by civilized man has driven pure water almost 
out of the list of beverages ; so now there are signs that 
it is retreating to the laboratory, like the Afreet to his 
bottle in the Arabian Nights. And let us hope that when 
alcohol is once driven back to its starting-place, man will 
be wise enough to seal up the monster for ever. 

The -first medical treatise on the uses of alcohol was 
one entitled Veber den Gehrauch und Nutzen des Brannt- 
weins (Concerning the Use and Utility of Brandy), written 
by Dr. Michel Schrick, in 1483. 

During the next hundred years after this date much A sixteenth- 
and various consideration was given to the subject, and opSnof 
more or less clear opinions were formed as to the effect alcohol. 

i.iiT ^ -, -, . . en- "Theoricus.' 

oi alcohol on man ; and by examining some ot the views 
entertained by "Theoricus," a prominent German of the 
sixteenth century — i.e., about midway between the time 
of its practical discovery and our age, and when it had 
spread over the whole of Europe — we may be better able 
to appreciate the changes which medical opinion has 
undergone between then and now. 

In the EollinsJied Chronicles (1577), "Theoricus" 
describes the properties of alcohol in these words : — " It 
sloweth age, it strengtheneth youth, it helpeth digestion, 
it cutteth phleg-me, it abandoneth melancholic, it relisheth 
the heart, it light eneth the mind, it quickeneth the spirits, 



182 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

it curetli the hydropsia, it healetli tlie strangurie, it 
pounces tlie stone, it expelleth. gravel, it puffeth. away 
ventositie ; it keepetli and preservetli the head from whirl- 
ing, the eyes from dazzling, the tong from lisping, the 
mouth from snaffling, the teeth from chattering, and the 
throat from rattling ; it keepeth the weasen from stiffling, 
the stomach from wambling, and the heart from swelling ; 
it keepeth the hands from shivering, the sinews from 
shrinking, the veins from crumbling, the bones from 
aching, and the marrow from soaking." 

As we have seen, these diseases, with scores of kindred 

afflictions, are precisely the fruits which the use of alcohol 

bears in the organism of man, and it would seem as if 

" Theoricus " must have been both a wag and a physician. 

The following are some of the principal testimonies 

and opinions, marking the progress of medical thought 

against the indiscriminate use of alcohol in modern times. 

Dr. Norman § 55. At the Crystal Palace Jubilee Conference 

medica? (September, 1879), an essay on the Medical History of the 

history of the Temperance Movement was read by Dr. Norman Kerr. 

temperance ,, . .-^ , • x i i £ ±t ± 

movement. At no stage in the onward progress oi the temperance 
movement," said Dr. Kerr, "have representatives of the 
medical profession ever been wanting. In the early or 
moderation stage, when the advocacy of temperance 
reformers was confined to abstinence from ardent spirits, 
a numerous company of ^sculapians was invariably in 
the van. 

" Leaving out of the reckoning altogether the many 
unstinted commendations of temperance by the early 
fathers of the healing art, while united temperance effort 
' was yet in the womb of time, from the ranks of the noble 
profession of medicine emanated graphic expositions of 
the physical, mental, and moral dangers accompanying 
even limited alcoholic indulgence. 

"In 1725 Dr. George Cheyne* had issued a second 
edition of his first work, in which he commends total 

* " Neither were they ever designed by Nature and its Author for 
the animal body as nourishment or common drink, and scarce deserve 
a place in the apothecary's shop ; spirits having made more havock 
among mankind by far than even gunpowder." — Natural Method of 
curing Diseases of the Body and Disorders of the Mind, by Dr. George 
Cheyne (London, 1742). 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 183 

abstinence as the most natural, healtliy, and safe mode of 
living, and condemns moderate drinking as unliealthy 
and dangerous. 

" In 1747 Dr. James wrote, ' Every person wlio di^inks 
a dram seems to me guilty of a greater indiscretion than 
if he had set fire to a house ; and for the same reasons 
cordial waters are the most dangerous furniture for a 
closet.' Again, 'I cannot forbear admiring the great 
wisdom of Mohammed, who strictly forbade his followers 
the use of fermented liquors for better reasons than are 
generally apprehended.' 

" Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of The Botanic Garden 
(London, 1794), calls wine ' a pernicious luxury in common 
use, and injuring thousands.' 

" In 1802 Beddoes pointed out the many dangers 
attendant on the social and medical use of intoxicating 
drinks, dwelling on the ' mischief from wine taken con- 
stantly in moderate quantity,' and emphasizing ' The 
enfeebling power of small portions of wine, regularly 
drunk.' 

" Dr. Trotter, two years later, denounces beer as a 
' poisonous morning beverage,' says ' wines strengthen 
neither body nor mind ; ' and thus writes, ' When wine 
was first introduced into Great Britain in the thirteenth 
century, it was confined to the shop of the apothecary.' 

" Writing to Dr. Joshua Harvey, in 1829, Dr. John 
Cheyne, Physician- General to the Forces in Ireland, in a 
letter published in Dublin, contends that the medical 
profession ' ought to make every retribution in their 
power for having so long upheld one of the most fatal 
delusions which ever took possession of the human mind.' 

"Mr. Higginbottom was probably an abstainer many 
years before the birth of the movement, and had abandoned 
the prescription of alcohol as early as 1832." 

In a letter to a friend, written in 1836, Dr. Higgin- Dr. Higgin- 
bottom* says, " I consider I shall do more in curing disease ?he*aSan- 

* John Higginbottom, F.R.S., of Nottingham, was a keen and 
able clinical practitioner, who wrote several classical papers on 
practical medicine. His far-seeing and courageous stand against the 
medical prescription of alcohol branded him as a maniac, and 
ostracized him from practice among the higher classes of society. 
Another man of like conscience and courage was Mr. James Hawkins, 



continuation. 



184 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

tagesofpre- and preventing disease in one year hy prescribing total. 
ateWnence!*^^ (abstinence, than I could do in the ordinary course- of an 
extensive practice of a hundred years. I have already seen 
diseases cured hy total abstinence that would not have been 
cured by any other means. If all stimulating drinks and 
tobacco were banished from the earth, it would he a real 
blessing to society, and in a few weeks they would never 
be missed, not even as a medicine.^^ * 
Dr. Kerr in Dr. Kerr continues, in his Crystal Palace essay, "The 

three well-known Declarations concerning alcohol merit 
special mention. The first was drawn by Mr. Julius 
Jeffreys in 1839, and was signed by Sir B, Brodie, Sir 
James Clarke, Sir J. Eyre, Dr. Marshall Hall, Dr. A. T. 
Thompson, Dr. A. Ure, the Queen's physicians ; Professor 
Partridge, Professor Quain, Mr. Travers, Mr. Bransby 
Cooper, and seventy-eight leaders in medicine and surgery. 
This document declared the opinion to be erroneous that 
wine, beer, or spirit was beneficial to health ; that man in 
ordinary health required no such stimulant, and could not 
be benefited by the habitual employment of such in either 
large or small quantities ; that, even in the most moderate 
doses, alcoholic drinks did no good, while large quantities 
(such as by many would be thought moderate) sooner or 
later proved injurious to the human constitution, without 
any exceptions." 
First medical The Declaration drawn up by Dr. Julius Jeffreys,t here 
i?i839^**^" alluded to, contained the following paragraphs : — 
drawn up by "An opinion handed down from rude and ignorant 
Jeffreys.^^ times, and imbibed by Englishmen from their youth, has 
become very general, that the habitual use of some portion 
of alcoholic diink — as of wine, beer, or spirit — is beneficial 
to health, and even necessary for those subjected to 
habitual labour. 

of 36, Cold Place, Commercial Eoad, formerly a staff assistant 
surgeon at the battle of Waterloo. Like Dr. Higginbottom, he was 
an earnest and consistent abstainer, and at the same cost to his 
practice. Some valuable papers were contributed by him to the 
Temperance Intelligencer for 1840 ; and he had the firmness and 
sincerity to describe himself in the Medical Directory as " Teetotal 
since 1837." 

* From. Anti- Bacchus, h J the Itier. B. Parsons (London, 1839). The 
italics are by the Rev. Mr. Parsons. 

t See Dr. Grindrod's Bacchus (1839). 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 185 

" Anatomy, physiology, and tlie experience of all ages 
and countries, wlien properly examined, must satisfy every 
mind well informed in medical science tliat the above 
opinion is altogether erroneous. Man. in ordinary health, 
like other animals, requires not any such stimulants, and 
cannot be benefited by the habitual employment of any 
quantity of them, large or small ; nor will their use during 
his lifetime increase the aggregate amount of his labour. 
In whatever quantity they are employed, they rather tend 
to diminish it. 

" When he is in a state of temporary debility from 
illness, or other causes, a temporary use of them as of 
other stimulant medicines may be desirable ; but as soon 
as he is raised to his natural standard of health, a con- 
tinuance of their use can do no good to him, even in the 
most moderate quantities, while larger quantities (yet 
such as by many persons are thought moderate) do, sooner 
or later, prove injurious to the human constitution without 
any exceptions." * 

"The second Declaration," continues Dr. Kerr, "was Second 
originated, and the many signatures published, by Mr. declaration 
John Dunlop in 1847. More than two thousand of the most by Mr. John 
eminent physicians and surgeons signed this, including isl^.'^^ ^" 
Sir R. Brodie, Sir J. Clarke, Sir W. Buimett, Sir J. Forbes, 
Sir H. Holland, Sir A. Munro, Sir J. McGrrigor, Sir R. 
Christison, Dr. W. B. Carpenter, Dr. Copland, Dr. Mell 
Amott, Dr. A. Farre, Professors Guy, Allen, Thomson, 
Miller, McLeod, Easton, Anderson, McFarlane, Bainey, 
Buchanan, Paris, Winslow, Alison, Syme, Henderson, 
Lawrie, McKenzie, B. D. Thomson, Couper, and Simpson. 
This certificate set forth that perfect health is compatible 
with total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages ; that 
all such drinks can, with perfect safety, be discontinued 
either suddenly or gradually ; and that total and universal 
abstinence from alcoholic liquors and intoxicating beverages 
of all sorts would greatly contribute to the health, the 
prosperity, the morality, and the happiness of the human 
race. 

"The third Declaration, which was prepared by Pro- The third 

* The Rev. B. Parsons (cp. cit.) says, " To their honour it may be 
told that five thousand medical men in America have come forward 
and given their testimony against alcoholic drinks." 



186 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



medical 
Declaration 
by Professor 
Parkes in 
1871. 



Establishi- 

tnent of the 

Quarterly 

Medical 

Temperance 

Journal, 

1869. 



The British 

Medical 

Journal 

concerning 

alcohol as a 

medicine 

(1871). 



fessor Partes, on tlie suggestion of Mr. Ernest Hart and 
Mr. Robert Rae, in 1871, was signed by 269 leading 
members of tbe hospital staffs. Among tbose signing 
were Sir George Buitows, Sir Thomas Watson, Sir H. 
Holland, Sir William I'ergnsson, Sir James Paget, Sir 
Ranald Martin, Sir Henry Thompson, Sir Duncan Gibb, 
and Sir James Bardsley." 



The modem scientific temperance movement of England 
may be said to have commenced with the publication of 
Dr. F. R. Lees' Is Alcohol a Medicine ? (1866), and to have 
taken full shape with the establishment of the Quarterly 
Medical Ter)iperance Journal (1869), at the instance of Mr. 
Robert Rae, secretary of the N'ational Temperance League. 
In this quarterly will be found fairly reproduced almost 
all the best medical literature of the subject that has 
appeared since 1869. The intelligent advocacy of true 
temperance in this journal called forth both rejoinders 
and support in the medical press of Great Britain and 
other countries, and finally the British Medical Journal, 
the powerful organ of eleven thousand British physicians, 
invited an investigation of the drink question. On the 
30th of September, 1871, the British Medical Journal 
said — 

" Looking to the ineffable misery and disaster, the 
waste, degradation, suffering, and crime which are con- 
stantly wrought in this and most civilized nations by 
drink, we are far from thinking the importance of the 
subject can be exaggerated. . . . The influence of medical 
men, if they were united and agreed, might be all-powerful 
on this subject ; and we should be glad to see a conference 
of medical men, including those of the highest class, 
originated in some really influential quarters, with a view 
to giving this subject a more thorough discussion than it 
has yet had. We should like to hear a discussion in which 
Parkes, Edward Smith, Hughes Bennett, A. P. Stewart, 
Paget, Jenner, and some of our leading provincial 
practitioners, would take part, in which the whole subject 
should be probed. To what extent, if at all, are physicians 
justified in recognizing alcohol as an article of daily food 
in health ? Does the habit of prescribing alcoholic drinks 
act injuriously upon the morals and welfare of the people ? 



THERAPEUTICS; OR/ ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 187 

Is it possible or desirable to substitute tlie more enticing 
forms of alcobol by medicinally and less alluring forms ? 
We all of us sympatbize with the ends which the National 
Temperance League has in view. A small minority only 
practically participate in their means of action. Can we 
in any way, and in what way, help to excuse this nation 
from the curses which diink brings upon its population ? " 

This was followed by the strong appeal of Dr. A. H. H. 
McMurtry, of Belfast, in an article On the Duty of Medical 
Men in Relation to the Temperance Movement {Medical 
Temperance Journal, October, 1871). 

"The ignorance of the people," says Dr. McMurtry, Dr.McMur- 
" encouraged as it has been by the attitude of the medical q^ent^ appeal 
profession towards the temperance movement, with regard *« the 
to the nature, properties, and real value of alcoholic drinks, profession 
has constituted hitherto an almost impregnable barrier to ^^^pg^ance 
the progress of truth on this subject. . . . Medical practice, Journai,Oct. 
and medical teaching, and perhaps medical science on the ^^^^^" 
subject altogether, have begotten and fostered the popular 
belief that alcohol is one of the good creatures of God. 
The medical profession is responsible for the originating 
and perpetuating of the great mistake that alcohol is a 
wholesome thing. . . . The people's medical advisers 
either teach, by precept and example, that they are not 
injurious, or manifest an indifference to the evils produced 
by their use, which implies that they do not think them 
injurious. It matters little whether it is what they teach 
or what they do not teach that is the cause of the popular 
belief and popular custom ; for medical men are just as 
culpable if they do not dispel this error, as if they actually 
and directly taught it. They are just as responsible for 
its consequences, because it is their special province and 
privilege to diffuse that light and knowledge which alone 
could prevent them. For to whom can the temperance 
movement look, to whom should it look, for aid in exposing 
this pernicious falsehood but to the medical profession ? 
To whom else should a community suffering from the 
physical consequences of a physical poison appeal, not 
only for their cure, but for their prevention ? . . . Apart 
from the absolute duty of every man to abstain from the 
unnecessary use of a poison, it is pre-eminently the duty 
of medical men, who are naturally and justly considered 



188 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

guides in all tliat pertains to the preservation of healtli, to 
see that the powerful influence of their example is on the 
side of virtue and sobriety. Their superior knowledge of 
the poisonous nature of alcohol implies a greater obligation 
to abstain from it ; but it is their stronger and wider 
influence which, in an especial manner, lays them under 
a deeper responsibility to set the people a safe example in 
this matter, and incurs upon them a deeper guilt if their 
example leads the people astray. . . . Hence I maintain 
that it is the duty of medical men either (1) to discard 
alcohol altogether on the strength of the verdict which a 
large proportion of the profession — not to mention com- 
petent judges outside the profession — have pronounced 
against it ; or else (2) to examine the matter for themselves 
with an earnest and sincere desire to know the truth, 
considering the incalculable evils which so many truthful, 
unprejudiced, and thoroughly qualified men attribute solely 
to the common and medicinal use of alcohol (such use 
being founded on false notions of the nature and real 
value of the drink), I hold that it is the bounden duty of 
all who are in any degree responsible for this use of it, to 
give the whole subject that honest and attentive consider- 
ation which its importance demands. This would be a 
more philosophic, honourable, and philanthropic course to 
pursue than that so often adopted by medical men, of 
refusing either to study the question for themselves or to 
be instructed by those who have studied it. I should have 
thought that, if no other or higher consideration were 
sufficient, the honour of their profession would be enough 
to arouse them to defend it from the serious charge of 
contributing, either knowingly or in wilful ignorance, to 
the miseries of the human race. 

" But suppose that, after having given the subject the 
necessary investigation, they still believe that alcohol is an 
indispensable article of the ' Materia Medica,' what then ? 
What if some medical men have actually done so, and have 
been forced to the conclusion that alcohol is a useful food 
and a necessary medicine ? Then I tell them that it is 
their duty (3) to choose the lesser of two evils. Prescribe 
alcohol, either dietetically or medicinally, and you frequently 
create or resuscitate, and always run a risk of creating or 
resuscitating, supposing the patient survives, an uncon- 



therapeutics; or, alcohol as a medicine. 189 

trollable and ultimately fatal appetite for intoxicating 
drink. Thus in your desire to cure one disease, which 
many believe could be cured more certainly and more 
safely by other means, you administer a remedy which 
may and often does produce another disease of a much 
more serious character, inasmuch as it involves not only 
physical but moral injury to the patient, and untold misery 
to his friends. You also give rise to, and confirm, that 
widespread faith in the necessity for and remedial powers 
of alcoholic liquors, which I have said is at the very basis 
of the diinking customs, and is the remote origin of the 
traffic itself and all its evils. For while I do not say that 
all who drink do so because they tbink the drink is good for 
them, I do say that all begin to drink ignorant of the fact, 
and because they are ignorant of the fact, that alcohol is 
inherently and essentially bad for them. And this igno- 
rance is the result of the prescription and recommendation 
by medical men of the various intoxicating productions of 
the brewer and the distiller. And remember that the 
advocates of alcohol can claim no especial advantages for 
the alcoholic treatment which are not also claimed to a 
superior degree for the non-alcoholic treatment, by those 
who have expunged this agent from their list of remedies 
altogether." 

Stirred to the quick by these earnest words, Mr. Robert Origin of the 
E,ae, the secretary of the National Temperance League, meSc?i"*^^^ 
consulted with Mr. Ernest Hart, editor of the British Declaration. 
Medical Journal, who advised that the counsel of Prof. 
Parkes, of the Army Medical School, Netley, and other 
prominent medical men, should be sought with reference 
to the practicability of such a conference as had been 
suggested in the British Medical Journal. Dr. Parkes 
questioned the utility of a conference, and recommended 
a Declaration instead. Mr. Rae urgently requested that 
he would draft such a Declaration as the profession in 
general would be prepared to sign. This was done, when 
Mr. Rae submitted it without delay to Dr. Burrows, 
Sir Thomas Watson, Sir James Paget, and Mr. Busk, 
each of whom suggested a few alterations, which were 
at once adopted. These four physicians then signed 
the Declaration ; after which it was presented, at Dr. 
Burrows' suggestion, 'to some of the senior and most 



190 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



distinguislied members of the medical profession in London 
for signature," 



Opinion of 
the Times 
as to the im- 
portance of 
the third 
medical 
Declaration. 



The Lancet. 



The Pall 
Mall Gazette. 



The Declaration, after being signed by two hnndred 
and sixty-nine leading members of the medical profession, 
was printed with its full list of signatures in the Times 
(January 1, 1872), which, in commenting on it three days 
later, said : — 

"It is very seldom that a great social question such 
as that of the limits between a wholesome and safe use 
of alcohol on the one hand, and injurious excess on the 
other, evokes such a body of witnesses as that subscribed 
to the medical protest in our columns. It is impossible 
not to attach very great value to the deliberate opinion 
of those who must know a good deal of the subject, and 
who are not generally given to exaggeration. . . . That 
two hundred and fifty medical men, including the most 
distinguished names in the profession, should have agreed 
to a manifesto against the excessive and incautious adminis- 
tration of alcohol, has taken the world rather by surprise, 
as revealing a certain unsuspected background of actual 
knowledge and unanimity. Of course there are protests 
and dissents, but they do not come to much. . . . This 
famous document, whether it be read with implicit agree- 
ment or with criticism, is certain to call attention to the 
history and actual results of alcoholic stimulants wherever 
there are eyes to see, and reason to understand." 

" This list of names is very representative," says the 
Lancet (December 23, 1871). "It is, indeed, so inclusive that 
a few honoured names which are absent are conspicuous by 
their absence.* It is so comprehensive that one is sur- 
prised to miss a particular name that seems necessary to 
give complete authority to the document." 

And this from the Fall Mall Gazette has no uncertain 
sound — 

" Although there are those who express indignation at 



* Apropros of these remarks by the Lancet, it is but fair to recollect 
that, with the exception of the names of Sir William Gull and Sir 
William Jenner, it can hardly be said that any conspicuous medical 
name is absent from this Declaration, and these two physicians were 
at that time at Sandringham, attending upon the Prince of Wales in 
his critical illness. 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 191 

the assumption tliat alcoliol is ever prescribed inconsider- 
ately in large quantities, or tliat sufficient care is not 
always taken to cut it off at the right moment and to 
arrest subsequent habits of induced tippling, there are too 
many well-known examples of habitual evil induced by 
medical prescription to make us hesitate to accept the 
Declaration in its every word and in all its meanings." 

The Declaration read as follows : — 

"As it is believed that the inconsiderate prescription The wording 
of large quantities of alcoholic liquids by medical men for medica* ^^^ 
their patients has given rise, in many instances, to the Declaration. 
formation of intemperate habits, the undersigned, while 
unable to abandon the use of alcohol in the treatment of 
certain cases of disease, are yet of opinion that no medical 
practitioner should prescribe it without a sense of grave 
responsibility. They believe that alcohol, in whatever 
form, should be prescribed with as much care as any 
powerful drug, and that the directions for its use should 
be so framed as not to be interpreted as a sanction for 
excess, or necessarily for the continuance of its use when 
the occasion is past. 

" They are also of opinion that many people immensely 
exaggerate the value of alcohol as an article of diet, and 
since no class of men see so much of its ill effects, and 
possess such power to restrain its abuse, as members of 
their own profession, they hold that every medical 
practitioner is bound to exert his utmost influence to 
inculcate habits of great moderation in the use of alcoholic 
liquids. 

" Being also firmly convinced that the great amount of 
drinking of alcoholic liquors among the working classes of 
this country is one of the greatest evils of the day, destroy- 
ing — more than anything else — the health, happiness, and 
welfare of those classes, and neutralizing, to a large extent, 
the great industrial prosperity which Providence has 
placed within the reach of this nation, the undersigned 
would gladly support any wise legislation which would 
tend to restrict, within proper limits, the use of alcoholic 
beverages, and gradually introduce habits of temperance." 

Though couched in terms less complete and uncom- General im- 
promising than some desired, this document was yet " far duced*in the' 
in advance of social sentiment and popular practice," and public mind 



192 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



by the publi- 
cation of it. 



Medical 
opinions 
evoked by 
the publica- 
tion of the 
third Decla- 
ration. 
I)r. Henry 
Munroe. 



it raised such a storm of discussion within the medical 
profession, and led to such controversy in the daily press, as 
made it famous almost ere the ink of it was dry, and the 
animated dispute of which it was the nucleus did not 
subside until some of the keenest intellects, ripest ex- 
perience, and, fortunately, some of the noblest consciences 
in and outside the medical profession, had wheeled into 
line and spoken words which advanced the whole temper- 
ance reform movement in the hearts and conviction of the 
people, as almost nothing else could have done.* 

In the great medical meeting in Exeter Hall (January 
30, 1872), Dr. Henry Munroe, of Hull, said— 

" Forty years ago we used to bleed — or rather, I should 
say, ' phlebotomize ' — every one. I have sat at the table of 
a hospital forty years ago, and when I have seen prescribed 

* At about this time there were revivals of the temperance 
movement in other countries. 

Some six hundred of the physicians of Holland issued this 
medical Declaration, even more stringent than the English one : — 

"1. The moderate use of strong drinks is always unhealthy, even 
when the body is in healthy condition. It does not do any good to 
the digestion, but even interferes with that process ; for strong 
drinks can only temporarily increase the feeling of hunger, but not 
in favour of digestion, after which strong reaction must follow, and 
evils which are usually attributed to other causes, but often result 
frora the habitual use with moderate drinkers. 

" 2. The assertions that intoxicating drinks used moderately are 
naturally innocent means of cheering up — that they are useful in 
severe colds — or that they are with labouring men equivalents for 
insufficient nourishment — or useful in misty and humid air — or for 
people obliged to work in the water — or a protection against con- 
tagious diseases — are without any foundation, and contradictory to 
experience and to human reason ; and the habitual use of the same 
has therefore an unhealthy effect, and an influence unlike what 
people expect from them. 

" 3. The habitual use of strong drinks works most perniciously 
on all diseases, and especially on consumption. 

" 4. Eegarded as the usual drink of all classes, they are not only 
improper on account of the above reasons, but also against moral 
development and material prosperity, in such measure as to be con- 
sidered and to be stamped as the greatest underminers of the actual 
welfare of mankind." 

In 1872 America manifested her sympathy with the movement, 
and in May of that year, at the twenty-third annual meeting of the 
American Medical Association — about one thousand members being 
present — a resolution to discourage the use of alcohol in medical 
practice was unanimously carried. 



THEEAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 193 

' blue pill at night, and black draught in tbe morning,' I 
have known what was going to be tbe next question. The 
next question would be, ' Have you any pain anywhere ? ' 
And woe to the patient if he said he had, or if even he 
thought he had. The next line would be certain to be 
Venesectio ad uncias duodecim (' bleeding to twelve ounces ') . 
I have seen that repeated a dozen times in one morning 
when I was a pupil, upon all sorts of persons, of all ages, 
of all sizes, and of both sexes. A reaction took place in 
the profession. We gave up the lancet, as we found that 
people living in cities and towns were not always labouring 
under inflammatory diseases. What we are labouring 
under now is debility. Everything is debility now. We 
went to the other extreme — therefore brandy became the 
elixir vitce, the sole panacea for all the ills that flesh is heir 
to. If a man were in collapse, brandy relieved him ; if in 
the agony of colic, why, brandy revived him ; if life was 
burning out in fever, brandy cooled him ; and if he was 
starved to death, why, brandy warmed him. In fact, 
brandy was the pet drug of the Pharmacopoeia. Every- 
thing else dwindled into obscurity. I will give you some 
of my reasons for discontinuing the treatment of disease 
with alcohol. I don't like to talk of myself, but I can tell 
you that I have had twenty attacks of gout during the last 
twenty years ; if that doesn't make a man wiser I don't 
know what will. During the first ten years of this period 
I had sixteen attacks lasting from seven days to four 
weeks ; but during the last ten years, since I abandoned 
the use of alcoholic liquors in any shape whatever, I have 
only had four attacks, two of them through accidents, and 
the other two very mild, lasting only a few days. I have 
tried brandy and water, I have tried beer, and I have tried 
wine, and the whole category of such things, and I have 
ascertained how much of each of them it will take to 
induce an attack, and I have published these experiments 
in the Medical Journal and need not repeat them to-night. 
I determined to discontinue the use of such liquors, and 
have been much more successful in practice ever since. 
I ceased also to order any more for my patients, and they 
are better too. In Hull, in the year 1849, we had the 
cholera very bad indeed. It ravaged amidst us fearfully. 
Above two thousand persons were buried in our cemetery, 

o 



194 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

victims of this disease. I saw at least one hundred persons 
a day in that dreadful disease, and most of those who died 
were from thirty to forty years of age. We tried the 
brandy-and- opium treatment, and that was a failure. 
Altogether we lost somewhere about forty or fifty per cent, 
of the persons attacked by the stimulant treatment and 
with opium. One medical man thought that the opium 
with the brandy was not strong enough (something like 
Mr. Skey) , so he ordered that very strong doses of cam- 
phine mixture should be administered, and he pledged 
his reputation that this would cure any case of cholera, 
but I believe it was a failure. The cholera took off 
nearly all the drunkards. People whom I have seen 
intoxicated at my surgery in the morning were dead the 
same night, and buried the next morning. It was a 
fearful thing. I remertiber six cases of persons who were 
so obstinate as to refuse to taJce any doctors' stuff or brandy. 
I wrapped them up in blankets sprinkled with turpentine 
and left them. Four out of that six are walking about 
noiv. They recovered, but we lost fifty per cent, of the 
others. Turning to fever — I have tried alcohol in fever, 
and I have treated fever without alcohol ; and my ex- 
perience is that we lose five per cent, in treating cases of 
fever without alcohol, and twenty-five per cent, with alcohol. 
It is the experience of workhouses and hospitals that one 
patient in ten of those treated with brandy for fever died ; 
but of those tresiied without brandy only one death in thirty 
cases occurred. I have treated many cases of delirium 
tremens, and I have given alcoholic liquors heroically, but 
had many deaths during that treatment ; but when the 
' patients were isolated and cut off from all spirits and liquors, 
I have never lost a case. It is a rare thing to lose a m.an 
under such treatment. In regard to hgemorrhage and 
violent floodings, I remember a case of this kind in which 
I had to sit up the whole night to give brandy, and 
religiously gave it to the lady, and I have gone home in 
the morning with the reflection, ' What a wise provision it 
is that we have such an excellent thing as brandy always 
at hand ! ' I tried the case next time without brandy, 
and the lady sooner got better, and there was no secondary 
fever, and her remark was, ' I shall never try brandy 
again.' I could go on multiplying these illustrations, but 



THEEAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 195 

I must not tire you. WitH regard to the indiscrimmate 
use of alcohol, this ' Declaration ' says, it is ' believed ' it 
has a tendency to promote the formation of habits of 
intemperance. It seems singular, but I believe it to be 
true, and it is a great sorrow to me now to think of, that 
for twenty years I made many families unhappy. I believe 
I have made many drunkards, not knowingly, not pur- 
posely, but I recommended them to drink. It makes my 
heart ache, even now, to see the mischief that I have made 
in years gone by, mischief never to he remedied hy any act of 
mine. But in this respect at least I do not sin now, and 
have not done so for the last ten years. I do not take 
intoxicating drink myself, and I do not have it in my 
house, and I do not give it to anybody else." 

Dr. J. J. Ritchie, of Leek, said (in the same meeting). Dr. j. j. 
"In my practice I have given no stimulants in fever for 
years. I have never, so far as I remember, for ten or 
twelve years, lost a single patient from typhoid fever, and 
never given a single drop of stimulant therein." 

The venerable Dr. Jno. Higginbottom, of Nottingham, Dr. Higgin- 
in a letter to the Times, dated January 12, 1872, referring ^^"^^• 
to this Declaration, said — 

" I was educated in the opinion that alcohol was abso- 
lutely necessary in the treatment. of disease, and for the 
first twenty years of my practice I gave it to my patients, 
but for the last forty I have discontinued it altogether, not 
having once prescribed it as a medicine. As early as 1813 
I discontinued port wine in typhus fever (the term typhoid 
was not come into use as a distinction at that early 
period) , afterwards in English cholera, uterine haemorrhage, 
delirium tremens, and in cases of exhaustion and sinking. 
In the year 1827 I had lost all confidence in alcohol as a 
medicine, from a conviction of its inefficiency, and also 
from its very dangerous qualities. It is not necessary to 
enter into the details of my practice, as I have given them 
to my medical brethren in the Lancet and British Medical 
Journal. In August, 1862, I had a paper read before the 
British Medical Association, in London, on the non-alcoholic 
treatment of disease. 

" The result of my non-alcoholic treatment is, that 
acute disease is much more readily cured, and chronic 
disease more manageable. I have not known of any 



196 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

patients having been injured by my disuse of alcohol. It* 
is equally successful in surgical as in medical practice. 
No person can form any idea of the superiority of the 
practice of medicine and surgery when alcohol is removed 
from it. It is the complete emancipation from the slavery 
of alcohol, and the practitioner has a freedom he never 
before experienced." 

The important initiative, energizing, and effectuating 
part taken by Mr. Robert Rae in getting this Declaration 
before the public is eloquently testified to in the address * 

* " To Robert Eae, Esq., Secretary to the National Temperance 
League. 

" Dear Sir, — With feelings of very great pleasure we welcome you, 
in tlie name of the Council of the British Medical Tetwperance Associa- 
tion, on your return to the shores of old England. 

" We do this all the more heartily and appropriately because you 
have always taken such a deep interest in the medical aspect of the 
great temperance reform, and because, by your intelligent efforts, 
the medical profession has been largely influenced in favour of total 
abstinence. 

"It was at your initiative that the important medical Declaration 
of 1871 was set on foot, and chiefly through your tact and perse- 
verance that it was carried to a successful issue. From that time we 
may date a new departure in the medical treatment of the question, 
by which it received a mighty impetus. 

" The very useful and encouraging series of breakfast meetings 
given annually to the members of the British Medical Association 
bear testimony to your untiring efibrts and organizing skill. 

" By your energy those great meetings held in the large hall 
above, and addressed by medical men, were carried to a successful 
issue, and exercised a marked convincing, converting, and confirm- 
ing influence. 

" To you we are indebted for the establishment and able conduct 
of the valued Medical Temperance Journal ; and, lastly, our Associa- 
tion itself is under a deep debt of gratitude to you for your kind 
co-operation from the period of its origin to the present time. 

" ' There are good works that are evident,' and such are your 
labours in the temperance cause. We rejoice to see you again among 
us, refreshed in body and mind, and trust that you may be spared to 
see more abundantly the certain fruit of all your efforts to dispel the 
pernicious ignorance respecting the action and tendency of alcohol 
still so prevalent among all classes of society. 
(Signed) "Benjamin Ward Richardson, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., 

" President. 
" John James Ridge, M.D., B.S., B.A., B.Sc.Lond., 

''Hon. Sec. 
".Lower Room, Exeter Hall, 

20th October, 1881." 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 197 

wMch. was presented to Mm by the Medical Temperance 
Association — convened in Exeter Hall (October, 1881) — in 
grateful acknowledgment of Ms vital and continual services 
in temperance reform. 

§ 56. The publication of tbe tMrd British medical 
Declaration was tlie initiative of a marked departure in 
medical practice. 

Dr. Charles Hare, president of the Metropolitan Branch Ur. Charies 
of the British Medical Association, in an article in the deciLe^in'^^ 
British Medical Journal (July 28, 1883) states— the^jse of 

" I well remember the time (twenty to twenty-five medicine. ^ 
years ago) when alcohol- giving was so rampant that it 
was difficult to see a patient who had been a few hours in 
the hospital before the time of one's visit, who had not 
already been put, almost as a matter of course, by the 
physicians or clinical assistant, on three or four ounces of 
brandy, or on double that amount of wine ; and because 
I would not give way to that alcohol- craze, and ventured 
to show that many serious diseases might be cured with 
the administration of little or no alcohol, I was considered 
(I well remember) the most unorthodox of teachers, if not 
sometMng worse than that. Bapid was the increase in 
the use of alcohol between the years 1852 and 1862, and 
indeed, in many cases, up to the year 1872 ; and you 
cannot fail to trace therein the great influence of the 
teacMngs and writings of Dr. Todd, and especially of his 
views on the Treatment of Acute Diseases. Thanks to the 
careful, prudent, and honest energy of Dr. Parkes,* a 
change of practice occurred, the consumption of alcohol 
diminished so much as to show in 1882 a most remarkable 
reduction in the cost of wine and spirits in all the hospitals 
(except St. George's) from wMch I have received returns. 

* Tlie verdict of Dr. Parkes on the use of alcohol as a medicine is 
too thorough and conclusive not to be included here also : — 

" If spirits neither give strength to the body nor sustain it against 
disease — are not protective against cold and wet, and aggravate 
rather than mitigate the effects of heat — if their use, even in modera- 
tion, increases crime, injures discipline, and impairs hope and cheer- 
fulness ; if the severest trials of war have been not merely borne, but 
easily borne, most easily borne without them ; if there is no evidence 
that they are protective against malaria or other diseases, then I 
conceive the medical officer will not be justified in sanctioning their 
issue under any circumstances." 



198 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Former and 

present 
opinions on 
the use of 
alcohol as a 
medicine. 



Thus (without making corrections for tlie somewhat in-* 
creasing number of beds), the cost of wine and ■ spirits 
consumed every tenth year, from 1852 to 1882, at Guy's, 
was £496, £1231, £1446, and £953 ; at Middlesex, £215, 
£550, £413, and £353 ; at Westminster, £208, £432, £367, 
and £137. 

" On the other hand, the use of milk has most rapidly 
increased in every hospital without exception, and has 
replaced — I believe greatly to the advantage of the 
patients — the alcohol in the treatment of disease. The 
quantity consumed in 1852 at St. Bartholomew's cost 
£684, and in 1882, £2012; at Guy's, £236 and £1488 
respectively; at the London Hospital, £426 and £2427; 
and so on." 

§ 57. But although alcohol has thus rapidly lost ground, 
and many physicians of repute have dispensed with it 
altogether, it is still considered and used as a great 
therapeutic agent. Even those who use it most, however, 
feel called upon to give reasons for their faith ; they must 
tell how, when, and why they employ it. Formerly 
alcoholic prescriptions constituted an important and com- 
plicated chapter in therapeutics, owing to botb professional 
and public ignorance of the nature of alcohol, together 
with the acceptability of the medicine to the patient, and 
the convenience of the prescription to the physician. Then 
it was considered to be of the utmost importance what 
kind of wine, spirits, or malt liquors were prescribed, a pre- 
caution now seen to have been largely based on ignorance. 
Investigation has proved that in all alcoholic liquors the 
alcoholic ingredient is essentially the same, viz., ethyl- 
alcohol. The other ingredients, such as various acids and 
salts, odoriferous and flavouring ethers in minute quanti- 
ties, and small portions of undecomposed albuminous 
particles, are not the ingredients for which alcoholic drinks 
are prescribed. If these are wanted, chemistry can furnish 
them without the alcohol ; moreover, they exist in alcoholic 
drinks in a proportion so minute, that excepting for a small 
acceleration or retardation of digestion — largely dependent 
upon the proportion of salts — medical science has not found 
any exact therapeutic differences in their uses. But, 
allowing that the most distinct differences had been proved 
to exist, owing to the variety of liquors used, it still 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 199 

remains an incontestable fact that, even thougli mysterious 
seeds of health inhered in special liquor prescriptions, the 
ripened science of liquor adulteration and its universal 
practice make it absolutely impossible for a physician to 
safely prescribe wines or spirits, or malt liquors, unless he 
can personally supply the same, after having first ascer- 
tained that they contain exactly what is required. 

Hence, any medical man who, in prescribing alcohol, 
does not prescribe it as alcohol, i.e., so many drops, drachms, 
or ounces to so much water, is a quack. He orders a 
thing of which he cannot prescribe the effects.* 

While considering this point of alcoholic prescription it Some points 
is proper to state that it is the physician's duty when pre- aiShS 
scribing alcohol, just as much as when prescribing any prescriptions 
other " powerful drug," to use scientific language in the preparations. 
prescription ; to disguise the taste of it in a compound pre- 
paration, and to label it as what it is — -poison. It seems 
also proper to mention in this connection that ethyl- alcohol, 
though a most excellent chemical solvent, can, in most cases, 
be replaced by glycerine, or if ethyl-alcohol must be used, it 
can be sufficiently disguised — without hurting its solving 
powers — to prevent its being tempting.f 

Therapeutically,} alcohol is prescribed for both external -me principal 

therapeutic 

* As a rale, medical men know no more of the value of wine as a uses of 
medicinal agent than anybody else. ... A glass of sherry is their alcohol, 
universal panacea for want of tone in the system ; but sherry may 
mean anything but the thing it is really called. — The Times, Sept., 
1865. 

f Even granting all that its most enthusiastic defenders claim for 
alcohol as a medicine, and even if the use of alcohol were confined to 
the prescription of the physician, the medical profession are sui'ely 
justified in discontinuing its use on the ground of its proven dangerous 
power to become master of body and mind. 

As it is — when, instead of being confined to the doctor's dose, the 
habit of alcoholic drink is a universal one, and when doctors them- 
selves are deprecating its use, and lamenting over its fearful results, 
its medical defenders can hardly escape the imputation of mere 
pecuniary self-interest ; knowing as they do that alcoholic drinks 
have produced innumerable drunkards. 

X A German work on Therapeutics (Hamburg, 1883), by the well- 
known Dr. Harnack, furnishes a discriminating scheme for the use of 
alcohol as a medicine, which is accepted by a large and eminent 
portion of German physicians. 

The digest of his scheme is as follows : — 



lant 



200 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

and internal use. Externally, principally as a caustic, its 
use is, of course, less injurious. It lias been found a most 
efficient means of destroying vermin in the hair, to be a 
good lotion for irritable ulcers, and to have a cooling 
effect when applied immediately to wounds made by ampu- 
tation. 

Internally it is used in manifold ways : — 

1. As a stimulant. 

2. As a narcotic. 

3. As an antispasmodic. 

4. As an antiseptic and antipyretic. 
As a stimu- That alcohol never is a stimulant, was clearly shown in 

chapter v., and therefore, when used as a stimulant, it 
must of course be wrongly used. 

It is a narcotic, and, like most narcotics, when taken in 
small doses, it is a pseudo-stimulant. The system dislikes 
and resists being put in chains, as much as a man would do ; 
if the chains are too heavy, as in the case of a large dose of 
narcotics, the systemmust temporarily submit, the struggle 
being useless ; but when the fetters are comparatively 
light, it at once musters its reserve forces to throw them 
off. And this activity, together with the feelings of relief 
(the nerves having been dulled in the very attack), are 

1. Calefacientia (heat -makers ) , or means for transforming living 
force into heat ; or economization of the heat already generated. 
Among these he counts turpentines, camphors, ammonia, etc., but 
not alcohol. 

2. Antipyretica (f ever-allayers) . — Among which quinine, veratrin, 
carbonic acid, and alcohol. 

3. Excitantia (nerve -irritants). — Here we find alcohol first in the 
list, then camphors, ethers, oils, etc. 

4. Intoxicants. — Ethers and alcohols. 

5. Anoesthetica (temporary nerve-benumbers). — Chloroform, ether, 
but not alcohol. 

6. Hypnotica (sleep-givers). — Opium, morphia, herba, cannabis, 
not alcohol. 

7. Anodynes (pain-soothers). — Opium, morphia, chloral, not 
alcohol. 

8. Sedatives (nerve-quieters) . — Opium, chloral, not alcohol. 

9. Tetanica (motor-stimulants).- — Strychnia, not alcohol. 

10. Tonics (strength -givers) . — Quinine, iron, strychnia, not alcohol. 

11. Antispasmodics (cramp-quellers). — Chloral, chloroform, 
m.orphia, opium, belladonna, hyoscyamus, etc., not alcohol. 

Thus he limits alcohol as a medicine to its uses in allaying fevers, 
and .as a nerve -irritant and intoxicant. 



THERAPEUTICS; OE, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 201 

misTiiiderstood, are supposed to be benefits, when in reality 
they are signs of paralysis, and tlie results of tlie system's 
strug-gle to defeat its foe. 

In cases where an artificial stimulant is useful, Dr. 
Symes Thompson recommends the following prescription : — 
"Quassia chips, a quarter of an ounce; cold water, a pint. 
After standing for half an hour, strain ; the infusion is 
then ready for use, and may be taken, a wineglassful at a 
time, alone, or mixed with a teaspoonful or two of ' malt 
extract.' " 

Considered in its true character, as a narcotic, the Asa 
power of alcohol to deaden pain * is unquestionable. In ^^^^^ ^^' 
colic, for instance, a draught of hot water with alcohol no 
doubt relieves the pain, but it accomplishes this by 
deadening the nerves. It provokes a more copious flow of 
the gastric juice, with the immediate effect of facilitating 
the interrupted digestion. Still, we have even Drs. Todd 
and Bowman's word, in their Physiological Anatomy (vol. ii. 
p. 210), that alcohol '''' retards digestion by coagulating the 
pepsine, and thus interfering luith its action," so that the 
supposed good is largely neutralized. 

If the hot water, instead of being mixed with alcohol, 
is flavoured with peppermint, ginger, etc., the water will 
dilute the irritating contents of the stomach ; the heat of 
the draught will soothe the irritated nerves, and the ginger, 
peppermint, and other carminatives will aid the muscular 
wall of the intestines to expel the gas and irritating 
contents. 

If this does not suffice, an emetic to free the stomach 
from irritating ingesta, a purgative to clear the intestines 
of crude or irritating substances, and a corrective, such as 
simple chalk mixture, to neutralize soured and fermenting 
foods, will effectually assist Nature without injuring her. 

In obstetric cases, dosing with alcohol is often resorted 
to for lessening the suffering with which child-birth is 
attended ; and upon the field of battle, when chloroform 
or ether are not at hand, a large dose of alcohol may 

* Tlie question wh.ether there is not a conversion of the expression 
of wrong, from that of pain into something of corresponding harm- 
fnlness to the system (thongh not in the same way observable), as 
there is in the conversion of the natural forces of motion into heat, 
etc., may not be unworthy of the consideration of scientists. 



202 ^ ^ THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

prove an efficient anaestlietic for a patient during an 
amputation . 

As a narcotic alcohol is an arrester of vital action, and 

primarily of nerve sensibility ; and this effect can certainly 

be obtained by means of ether, chloroform, opium, and 

other well-known drugs. 

As an anti- As an antispasmodic, alcohol may, because of its narcotic 

spasmodic, action, be at times found useful when other means are not 

at hand. 
Dr. Edmunds In Alcoliol as a Medicine (Manchester, 1867), Dr. James 
onthispoint. Edmunds says, "In the case of a child cutting its teeth, 
there is a nervous irritation which throws the whole body 
out of gear, and the respiratory muscles become locked, as 
it were, by the violence of the spasm of an attack of con- 
vulsions. Here the patient may be killed by momentary 
suffocation, through the very energy with which certain 
parts of the body act, just as a machine may become 
' locked,' and in order to put it right you have to turn the 
steam off. Under such circumstances alcohol sometimes 
proves useful as a paralyzer and blunter of those extreme 
sensibilities which evoke convulsive attacks." 

In cases of emergency, such as laryngismus (spasmodic 
croup) or convulsions, a small dose of spirit may be used 
with good effect ; but such cases are exceptional, and should 
be in the charge of skilled physicians. Certainly in all 
ordinary cases of " spasm," " flatulency," etc., the draught 
of hot water flavoured with ginger, peppermint, etc., or, at 
times, with a teaspoonful of sal- volatile, is a safer and 
better remedy. 
As an anti- The use of alcohol internally as an antiseptic and 

^n'ti^^rettc o^Yitipyi^etiG has been its best and longest defended strong- 
hold, garrisoned still by discriminating physicians. 

I will treat of these two uses in connection, as they are 
often combined. 

As we saw in chapter v., alcohol has the general 
effect on the system of congesting the blood in the utter- 
most capillaries, whose contractive powers it paralyzes. 
The blood, charged with alcohol, goes to and remains 
especially in that vast area of minute blood-vessels which 
penetrate the most delicate parts of the organism, the very 
parts most endangered by the ravages of exhausting fevers, 
and as alcohol is so powerful an antiseptic, it has been 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 203 

deemed a most useful agent in aiTesting the waste of 
fevers. 

Even were it so, it must not be forgotten tliat in this very- 
antiseptic process, i.e., in tlie tendency of the albumen to 
coagulate and the retarding of the transformation of the 
hydi'o- carbons, alcohol does a vast amount of harm; it 
impoverishes and degenerates the blood by depleting the 
blood-corpuscles and by occupying, poisoning, and wasting 
the water in the blood and tissues ; the degree of harm 
done, as well as the extent of tissue-preservation, being 
equally dependent upon the quantity and the degree of 
saturation of the alcohol used. 

And in addition to all this is the extra labour de- 
manded of the entire machinery of the body in order to 
expel alcohol and minimize the injuries done by it. Then 
there is always the danger that the use of alcohol as a 
medicine will lead to the evil habit of using it as a 
beverage. 

In the measure that alcohol preserves sick tissues 
from dangerously rapid waste, mast it check the natural 
processes of nutrition, and at the same time compel the 
whole system to muster its last forces to cope, not with 
its disease, but with its arch-foe alcohol. 

Dr. Solomon C. Smith, in a paper upon Antiseptic In- Dr. s. c. 
halations (Britisli Medical Journal, February 23, 1884), says t^compara- 
of antiseptics, " The term antiseptic, in fact, presupposes the J^"^® worth- 
existence of some such septic processes as we now know to antiseptics. 
be caused by bacterial growth. It has long been thought 
possible, by inhalations of creasote, to limit decomposition in 
the expectoration ; but, now that the investigations of many 
observers have shown the constant presence of certain 
bacteria in phthisical disease, the hope is that not only may 
antiseptic inhalations control septic processes in dead 
secretions, but that they may be destructive to those 
micro-organisms which are at the root of tubercular disease 
in living structures. To kill bacteria is one thing, to kill 
germs is quite another. It has been proved that they can 
stand a short boiling, that they can be floated in air- 
bubbles through strong vitriol, that they can be washed 
with carbolic solution of any strength short of five per 
cent., without being killed, or losing theii^ power of self- 
multiplication. Is it likely, then, that any vapour which 



204 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

could possibly be inhaled would be capable of destroying 
organisms wbicli are so retentive of their vitality? I 
think it is quite obvious that all evidence shows that it is 
impossible, either to keep germs out of the body, or by 
antiseptics to kill them. What else, then, can inhalations 
do?" 

Notwithstanding earnest protests against the use of 

alcohol in typhus and in typhoid fevers, it has been a 

general practice, ITow that it begins to look as if alcohol 

should be routed even from this stronghold, a glance at 

some of the landmarks in this struggle is interesting. 

The Rev. Dr. The Rev. Dr. Hancock, of London, in his Febrifugum 

watT-trea?- ^(^9'^^'^ (1^20), exalts the use of water in fevers, and his 

ment in ideas are further elaborated by Dr. Robert Jackson, in his 

Exposition of the Practice of Affusing Gold Water on the 

Surface of the Body, as a Bemedy for the Cure of Fever 

(Edinburgh, 1808). 

Dr. Billing Dr. Billing, who introduced clinical lectures, spoke 

toeSent in ^^^o^o^^J *o ^^^ point in his First Principles (1839), in these 

typhus fever. WOrds : 

" In typhus we should avoid stimulants as much as 
possible, inasmuch as the nervous centres being in a state 
of congestion, neither thet nor other organs have their 
POWER INCREASED BY THEM ; whereas by indirect (sedative) 
practice, we relieve the organs, and give them an opportunity 
of recovering themselves. 

" One thing necessary to the recovery of the nervous 
system is arterial blood : to produce this of a good quality, 
digestion and free respiration [food and fresh air] are 
requisite. It is useless to supply other than fluid nutri- 
' ment. 1 have found milk the best — until some reneWal of 
the nervous energy takes place. The restoration will not 
be expedited by stimulants. Experience teaches that 
stimulation, except during inanition, only oppresses'' 
Dr. Thomas And Dr. Thomas Beaumont, of Bradford, said, in a 

paper read before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh 
(April 7, 1843)— 

" In my own experience, which has extended over 
nearly thirty years, I have almost invariably rejected the 
use of wine in the treatment of fever ; for early in my 
professional life I was engaged in a close attendance of 
some months on a class of patients, most of whom could 



Beamnont on 
the same, 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 205 

not afford to procure wine, in the populous village of 
Guiseley, where typhus ranged from the ordinary form of 
continued fever, down to the worst kind of typlius gravior. 
The number of cases, and the severity of the symptoms, 
were truly frightful. I made 'a virtue of necessity,' and, 
contrary to my professional prejudices, proceeded in almost 
every case without a drop of wine. The result proved 
most propitious, the rate of mortality teing lower than I 
ever remember in an equal numher of cases. From that 
period I have regarded the use of stimulants in fever, and 
especially of alcoholic stimulants, with considerable dis- 
trust. If, indeed, the effect of alcohol be to carbonize the 
blood — and of this there can be no reasonable doubt — then 
its influence must he analogous to that of fever itself. The 
truth is, alcohol is a treacherous stimulant, and though it 
may rouse the depressed powers for a time, is invariably 
followed by a corresponding collapse." 

In the discussions which have recently taken place 
before the Medical Society of London, upon the cold-bath 
treatment in typhoid fever, the general character of the 
evidence given against antipyretic treatment with di'ugs, 
and especially alcohol, was conclusive. Dr. William Cay ley Dr. Cayiey 
furnished some remarkable data, stating that " during of cow™ath^ 
seven years (1868-1874) the rate, of mortality in the treatment 
Prussian army from typhoid fever was fifteen per cent. — fever in°^ 
an extremely favourable rate, which spoke much for the ^^^^"5" 
efficiency of the medical department. The antipyretic 
treatment, chiefly in the form of cold bathing, was then 
introduced, and during the next seven years (1875-1881) 
the rate was 9" 7 per cent. Here a comparison of exactly 
similar instances was made. The men in the two cases 
were of the same age, of the same social position, fed in 
the same manner, clothed in the same manner, lodged in 
the same manner, and, in all respects, placed under the 
same conditions ; the only difference being in the mode of 
treatment. But, as Grerman statistics on this question 
were perhaps regarded as suspect, an appeal might be 
made to French authorities, and here Professor Jaccoud 
might be cited ; and perhaps his authority would have 
more weight with many, inasmuch as he was decidedly 
opposed to Brandt's method, but without having given it 
a fair trial. He stated, in the debate on this subject at 



206 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

tlie Academy of Medicine last year, that, after a carefu-l 
collection of more tlian eighty thousand cases, lie found 
that the average rate of mortality in typhoid fever in 
France, under the old methods of treatment, was about 
nineteen per cent. ; whereas, under the new method, it was 
below eleven per cent. It was now necessary to inquire 
what was this new method which had effected this great 
reduction in the rate of mortality. Professor Jaccoud had 
his patients sponged with cold vinegar and water, if neces- 
sary, as many as ten times in the twenty -four hours, which 
he termed giving them a seance; and also administered, 
from time to time, large doses of quinine or of salicylate 
of soda. Now, whether a patient was sponged ten times 
a day with cold vinegar and water, or had an occasional 
cold bath, was a question, not of principle, but of detail. 
In either case, the same end — namely, the persistent 
reduction of temperature — would be effected. It need 
hardly be said that the antipyretic treatment was not 
bound up with the system of cold bathing, or of any 
particular method of reducing temperature. Cold bathing 
was, perhaps, the most efficient mode, and the one most 
generally applicable, aud which, on the whole, caused 
least annoyance to the patient; but a large number of 
cases were not suitable for it, and for these other means 
must be adojDted. Dr. Cayley stated that, in his opinion, 
keeping the temperature down by the abstraction of heat 
gave much better results than the repeated administration 
of large doses of the antipyretic di^ugs, as these powerful 
remedies could not be given in these large and frequently 
repeated doses without incurring the risk of seriously 
' disturbing important functions. In his opinion, therefore, 
they should be regarded as adjuncts to the other anti- 
pyretic methods, and not as substitutes." 
Dr. A. T. It was shown that the totality of deaths when alcohol 

Sie^great '^^^ used was decidedly greater than when it was not. 
mortality D^. A. T. Myers stated that from a collection of reports 
fever at^st?^ in the Mcdical Register of St. George's Hospital during 
HoTpltll *^® ^^^* ^®^®^ ^^^^^^ (^'•^•' 1877-1883) it was found that in 
(1877-1883) a series of 281 cases, all excepting 13 per cent, having 
akjohoiic been treated exclusively by "expectancy and alcohol," 
treatment, the number of deaths had been 69, that is, a death-rate of 
24' per cent. 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 207 

The British Medical Journal (Marcli 1, 1884), in 
summing up the outcome of these important discussions, 

Dr. Coupland, in his elaborate and able paper, Summary of 
rightly says that cold bathing is the only measure which SeaJment^*^ 
has succeeded, and he might have said on several occa- discussions, 
sions, in saving life threatened by hyperpyrexia, and no London ^ 
one would dispute its efficacy as a last resort in such ^^^^J^^j^ 
urgent cases. But it is the employment of the bath to British 
control the whole course of the fever that he discusses in j^^l'^^^i, 
his paper. The conclusion at which he arrives is one in March i', 
common with Brandt, Jiirgensen, Liebermeister, Cayley, ^^^^' 
and others, that the mean mortality of London from enteric 
fever treated all round is fifteen to eighteen per cent. ; while 
the mortality from cases treated by the cold bath would 
appear to be from ten to seven per cent. This is so 
material a reduction that, if the facts are to be relied 
upon — and we think they are sufficient for the pui^pose — it 
should ensure for this treatment a much more extended 
sphere of application than it has hitherto obtained. It is 
admitted on all hands that the reduction of temperature 
by bathing is more decided and more persistent than by 
any other means ; but, at the same time, we cannot think 
that the ingenuity of the mechanical mind has exhausted 
itself in its present measure of applying cold to the surface 
of the body. It would hardly be an insuperable difficulty 
to apply continuous cold to the surface, either dry or 
moist, equivalent to that of the bath ; and it is quite 
possible that in the ice-pack and the water-bed, or some 
modification of it, the advantages might be obtained with- 
out the necessity of taking the patient from his bed." * 

It is a happy augury for the future that the founder 
of a new school of medicine (the Dosimetric), Dr. Ad. 
Burggraeve, in his Handbook of Dosimetric Therapeutics 

* The Medical Times (March 8, 1884) half grudgingly admits that 
the cold batli (sponging or wet pack) is superseding the drug treat- 
ment in Germany. It says, " The bath treatment of enteric fever, 
which, if not absolutely originated, was at least brought into promi- 
nent notice for the first time in Germany, has lately been the 
subject of discussion at the Medical Society of Leipsic. No over- 
whelming consensus of opinion was brought to light as to the 
universal value of the treatment, although its acceptance would 
appear to be general." 



208 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



History and 
progress of 
the London 
Temperance 
Hospital. 



Dr. S. Nicolls' 
report on the 
results of 
non-alcoholic 
treatment of 
disease. 



(Ghent, 1876), does not even mention alcoliol. Foi" 
typhoid fever he prescribes Seidlitz salt, phosphoric acid, 
aconite, veratrine, etc. " The body must frequently be 
sponged," he says, " with cold water or solution of salicylic 
acid. In cases of high pyrexia the cold bath may be 
necessary." 

Thus, in its very citadel, as a therapeutic agent, 
alcohol is found to be very inferior in value to otber and 
innocent remedies. 

§ 58. A foundation for hoping that tbe use of alcohol, 
even as a medicine, vdll ultimately be abolished, was laid 
ten years ago in tlie erection of the London Temperance 
Hospital. 

The first steps toward the establisbment of this institu- 
tion may be said to have been caused by the success of 
non-alcoholic treatment of disease by Dr. S. Mcolls, the 
medical ofi&cer of the Longford Poor Law Union, during 
sixteen years (till 1865). 

In his " Report " for the year ending 29tli September, 
1865, he gives these figures : — 



Fever Admitted 142 

Scarlatina „ 33 

8r)iall-pox ,f 48 

Measles „ 8 



Ee covered 



135 

30 

47 

8 



Died 



Cases 231 Eecoveries 220 Deaths 11 

" The treatment is altogether without alcohol in any form; 
and the success will be seen to be the more conclusive 
when the particulars of the fatal cases are perused : — 

" Of the deaths in the fever wards, one was a boy aged 
ten years, whose fever became complicated with pneumonia, 
of which he died ; two were members of tbe constabulary 
force from a neighbouring Union, conveyed considerable 
distances (I consider the journey acted unfavourably) ; 
four were women, one of whom was deserted by her 
busband, leaving six helpless children with her ; one was 
a wandering mendicant brought in from the gripe of a 
ditch in a hopeless condition ; another was an unfortunate, 
whose constitution had been broken down by intemperance ; 
the fourth was a young woman who was recovering from 
scarlatina when she was attacked with typhus. Of the 
other four deaths, one was a case of confluent purple-pock. 



THEEAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 209 

in a boy eiglit years old ; tLree were from scarlatina, 
occurring with very delicate children, not two years old. 
The fever was, I dare say, of as bad a character as in the 
other parts of Ireland. In many instances entire families 
were hrougJit in in a very had condition. I still continue 
the treatment which for sixteen years I have found so 
successful." 

In 1867 Dr. James Edmunds, senior physician at the The origin, 
British Lying-in Hospital, London, proposed a similar and work o'f 
experiment at that institution. It worked for one year }^^ London 

TiTji 11 T ^ emperance 

with results of a reduced death-rate among both mothers Hospital. 
and live-born children. But opposition, chiefly by sub- 
scribers interested in the liquor trade, became so great as 
to render continuance of this effort impracticable. About 
two years later, however, a meeting, consisting practically 
of those who had been thus handicapped at the British 
Lying-in Hospital, was held at the National Temperance 
League Booms, and a committee was formed to further 
the establishment in London of a General Temperance 
Hospital. A temporary hospital was begun at 112, Gower 
Street, which had only sixteen beds, but such success was 
the result, that a fine freehold site was subsequently taken 
upon the Hampstead Boad, and one block, containing 
fifty-two beds, was erected. 

An aged gentleman who has been deeply impressed 
with the results of its work, and is anxious to see the 
hospital completed before his death, has placed some 
£10,000 at the disposal of the Board, and a second wing 
is now being erected (April, 1884). These blocks will 
raise the number of beds to about one hundred and twenty, 
while a large outdoor department will be in operation. 
The plan includes also a school and institute for temper- 
ance nurses, and a full medical school for medical practi- 
tioners, for which adjoining portions of land are obtainable. 

The Board of Management in its last report. May, 
1883, proved this experiment to have been a success. " At 
the present time," says this report, " not only are men of 
distinction ready to admit the value of the principle, with 
few limitations, but the medical officers of various public 
institutions are applying it more or less completely, and 
with a success which insures its widening adoption. . . , 
The practical conclusion points to such a generous support 



210 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

of the Temperance Hospital, and sncli completion of its 
scheme, as will keep its work prominently before tke 
public eye, and will lend the weight of its experience and 
authority to a more general exclusion of alcohol from the 
medical treatment of the sick." 

And the following summary* of the results of cases 
treated from the beginning in 1873 up till the last of 
April, 1883 (nine years and seven months) certainly com- 
pares favoui^ably with the reports issued by hospitals 
where alcohol is still used as a medicine. 

In-patients. 

Cured ... ... ... ... ... 953 

Eelieved ... ... ... ... 683 

Died ... ... ... ... ... 77 

Under treatment (April 30tli, 1883) ... ... 52 

Total number admitted ... ... 1765 

It thus appears that during the ten years the total 
number of patients admitted to the beds of the hospital 
was 1765. If we deduct from this number the 52 then 
still under treatment in the hospital, there will be left 
1713 completed cases. Among these the 77 deaths make 
a mortality of rather less than 4*5 per cent. Four and a 
half per cent, is an extremely low mortality. The cases 
include successful operations of Caesarian section, ovari- 
otomy, lithotomy, amputations of thigh, etc., removal of 
large cancerous tumours, and all the ordinary medical and 
surgical cases which come under treatment in a London 
general hospital. Part of this success is due to the dis- 
tinction of its medical staff, to the model character of the 
hospital, and to the devoted ladies who superintend the 
nursing. But a large part of the success is undoubtedly 
due to the fact that alcohol is practically disused. The 

* Owing to the courtesy of Mr. C. E. Dumbleton, house surgeon 
at the London Temperance Hospital, I am able to subjoin a continua- 
tion of this table, up to March 15, 1884 : — 

Cured ... ... ... ... ... 1265 

Eelieved ... ... ... ... ... 809 

Died ... ... ... ... ... 105 

Under treatment ... ... ... ... 51 

Total number admitted ... ... 2230 



therapeutics; or, alcohol as a medicine. 211 

visiting physicians and surgeons are in no way tied with, 
regard to the use of alcohol, if they deem it desirable to 
use it as a medicine. It is only stipulated that in the 
event of any such exceptional case, they fully report the 
matter to the Board. As a matter of fact, alcohol has only 
been used in one or two experimental cases, during these 
ten years, and in these cases without beneficial results. 
As an article of food and as a pharmaceutical vehicle, the 
use of alcohol is formally excluded from the hospital. 

The following table, in extenso, of all the cases of 
typhoid fever treated in the beds of the London Temper- 
ance Hospital, up to December 31, 1883, is taken from the 
Medical Temperance Journal (April, 1884). (It will be 
seen that the total mortality is a little over eleven per 
cent.) 



212 



THE FOUXDATION OF DEATH. 



o 
a 

o 

o o 



CO 



> CO 



o a 

O 



2 >> 




Usual course of symptoms. 

Excellent recovery. 
Severe case. Complicated 

with broncho-pneumonia. 
In very critical state when 

admitted. Temperature 

104°. 
Ordinary case. 


Admitted in extremely pro- 
strate state. Symptoms in- 
dicative of severe typhoid. 
Serious congestion of both 
lungs. Severe intestinal 
haemorrhage. I'urulent 
stools. Fourteen evacu- 
ations during one night. 
Recovery rapid and com- 
plete. 

Severe case. 

Complicated with pneumonia. 

Extreme prostration. Bowels 
moved seventeen and 
eighteen times a day. 
Ila'iiM.iiluige from bowels. 


1 


-a 


S 5 s 


s : 


s s s = s 




Ji S -2 j^ 

C^ ri M 3 


-^ C5 c^ M c^ C5 5q 


if 




a . ■B 


1 ' 


1 .M ^" 

«■ « a 


s 


3 


o 1 « 

is'l Is 

^ 1 ^ 


2 2 
2 2-2 

^ 1 


00 2 -< 2 

11=1-1 II 


I 

p 

8 


1 

2 


Jill 


111 


II 1 ! Ill 

£1 1 1 ^ »i 


1 


§ 


fe f=; g 


fa fa 


s" fa" s s ^ 




?5 


^ ^ 2 


2 ^ 


S5 S? S 2 2 




H 

H 


Q a "-j 

^72 < ^ 




fa ^- ^ -^ ^' 
g d P? 


^1 


-r- X 

15 


^ ^ tb 






cc o O 


2 


r~ ^ n 

O 00 — 1 


2 g 


S ^ 2 § 2 

-f ^ 10 «o 




- 


(N CO Tj" 


K3 O 


X- 00 «5 — 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 213 



^g^ 



-, = • o 



'3>a ^oa st^e 



^ ^ ^. ^ i i i 2 § > >* ^ o* c' <= a 

<X5;a?(— ooOx.Zoc^x-00 ^x— OC^X^OO l^X'lXhiJx^X-. 

x-Cx^x_x^xx^oo l=iX--X Xi^OO QO'^X-XX-i 

^ -^ -1-3 rH^ ^— n--C -^ g rH _^^^^^rH ^ ^_^ ^_r: -^5 -H^ , 



.S S .5 
-S .S -2 






c5 *- °° S^ 2 






■-I -i 






cfb^S-Sfe®^? ^ g I 5.^ ^ b 



;3 






fe 


fe 


^ 


g 


S 


§ 


g 


s 


P^' 


S 


g 


§ 


s 


fe 


E=i 


fe 


s 


M 


§ 


X 


5 


^ 


= 


o 


la 


o 


C^l 


o 


.s 




la 




us 


J2 



g o li; H !z; m "^ ph" d K ;?; p^ d s <i ^ ^ 

a ^" "-^ ^' ^ H ^ k; H o d 63 "-J fa H <5 ^ 

= O 3 -I 5 -- S*- §"-. O r-i^ -I Of,g-o,^C^"N 0(M^N^(N2?q^M C.M 

<x<-x-<xQCxrrxt7XH^oo fcxry^x^x^oo hr. cct^Xi^xC^oo'-ico «a!oo 

^x^xx^x^^x'^x^oo x^x_gX_,a3 '^ocx^x^x^oo ^ao 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



"2 t^ 


IP 


.i1 


ghest tem- 

ghest tem- 

ghest tem- 

omplicated 
a of right 
tempera- 
e delirium, 
ghest tem- 

ure 10404. 
vacuations 




'1 


orrhage. 
ry case. Hi 
ture 105°-2. 
ry case. H 
ture 1040-4. 
ry case. H 
ture 1050. 
case. C 
pneumoni 
. Highest 
106°. Activ 
ry case. H 
ture 1040-8. 
t temperat 
ut eleven e 


0) o 


a§g§g§g£5§'£§s|5 






S-S 


lis 


pi ii J? J:? <B i' t^ 
CO O O O CO O W 



'%,6 



"S in in 












W P^ 



1 ^r-J CD , 

! ^ 0) O o 









as 



ooO ooO ooO ( 
rt 00 rt 00 ,1^ 00 ^ ( 

^ rH ::|^ r-l to r-l CO ' 



"S CO O CO 
O 00 o 0° 



5h$ M O M 
3l2i 00(^ 00 
3 _ 00 << 00 
^ra rH ^ r-l 






.= o 






cs 


a 


s 


^03 


J 


M 


rO 


^ 




c3 




<2 


s 


tS 


i-:i 


|2i 


J 









lis 



fe § § § 



fe § 



<5 W d d 
h4 I I aj 



^ d 



ft H > 
PP t4 d 



fiS 



Qsa' 



^« ^' 

<;oo <;ou^i^u^i^ 

^00 _, 00 00 CO 00 

-J^rH TSr-ljar-li-l 

5 C ie to 



I 5 CO ftCO 

I <; 00 - - 



<j 00 



IM 



(N 



^ CO 5 ^ S*M S'M §*« 

<^oo'qoo ^^oo^J^oocooo 

^ 00 00 COoo^oo^oo 

i ^ ^ ^ 2 



CO 00 



therapeutics; or, alcohol as a medicine. 215 



cias-s ^§<&l« 2^^^!^ 1:2^ in g^p^BJi-^^I^S 

5g|^p^|gtg -=^ ^-gcs.-^i ^»2s-3»-§ £^ § as g-24:^ ^g 

III is I &?.i skills |l g litUmh. |?'S.a ,5slS's i I 









% 




















r3 




V 
















-O 




5 






s 


s 


s 










.2 

ft 










. 




. 




. 


„ 




„ 




> 


.a 




^i" 


a 




n 




a 









s 


^ 


OS 


n^ 


a 


00 


^S 


a 


S^ 


QS 






^ 3 


^ 00 


V, 


00 


-fi- 


'?^ 




52 












lO 
























(N 




« 


(N 







.«5ri' 



= g2 



03 


-^ 


§ 


m 


OQ 


w 


a' 


c»S 




§ 


^ 


pC 


e4 


E=i 


fa" 


S fa 




§ 


S 


S 




CO 


f-H 


^ ^ 



■< ■< W cq CO W o 

H 1^ <ii d <!i ^ fa" 



Q 00 Q 00 

•— ' QO I— ' QO 



1 - 








^ 


^ 






















1 § 























cq 


(M 


(N 


IM 


(N 


IM 



216 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Dr. It will be seen tliat tlie mortality of this long series of 

SaSment^ cases is Very mncli less tlian usual. As to his own 
regarding methods of treatment, Dr. Edmunds writes : — 
oflhe non-^'^ " 1. I have prescribed no alcohol, and I have a strong 
alcoholic conviction that in tvphoid fever, as a general rule, alcohol 

treatment in . , i , -^ ^ i i ii x -x • x n • • • 

the London IS not Only not necessary, but that it is actually injurious. 
HoT^tT'^^^ Its effect, when given in large doses, of lowering the 
temperature is obtained more safely and more easily by 
tepid sponging, the wet pack, simple diaphoretics — such 
as the acetate of ammonia, moderate doses of citrate of 
potash. On the other hand, reduction of temperature, 
when obtained by the large doses of alcohol which are 
necessary, is followed by increased distaste for food, less 
perfect digestion, and greater intestinal suffering. The 
use of alcohol, also, in my opinion, predisposes to the 
occurrence both of intestinal heemorrhage and of that fatal 
complication — perforation of the intestine. 

"2. I never feed my patients ' solely with cold milk.' 
I always use more or less of well-boiled gruel, made from 
fine clean oatmeal ; and, generally, I use a mixture of two 
parts of thin gruel and one part of fresh new milk ; the 
milk being added direct to the gruel as soon as this is 
completely cooked, and thus becoming scalded but not 
boiled. 

" 3. In cases of haemorrhage from the intestine, I never 
select lead, but always turpentine, in thirty-drop doses 
given upon loaf sugar, or shaken up in milk, and repeated 
every few hours. 

"4. In troublesome diarrhoea I give opium only as an 
exceptional remedy. Covering the abdomen with a hot 
wet flannel and waterproof covering seems to me to relieve 
the pain and tenderness better than the administration of 
opium. 

" 5. I always prescribe some daily dose of fresh fruit, 
such as grape-juice, or fresh lemon-juice in sweetened 
barley-water as a drink to be taken at the patient's dis- 
cretion. Some such fresh vegetable element is much 
longed for by the fever patient, and can generally be so 
administered as not to increase the diarrhoea. The 
haemoiThage, which so frequently occurs in typhoid, I 
believe to be often due to having overlooked this necessity 
for fresh vegetable juices. In all long illnesses, if fresh 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 217 

vegetable juices are not regularly administered, there arises 
a purpurous tendency wMcli predisposes to irrepressible 
ligemorrliage, and to extension of ulceration. 

" 1^0 alcohol lias been administered, either dietetically, 
pharmaceutically, or medicinally, in any one of the cases 
of typhoid fever admitted to the Temperance Hospital, and 
my medical colleagues and myself are perfectly satisfied 
with our results." * 

§ 59. A consideration of paramount importance in con- The effects 
nection with the question of alcohol as a medicine, is that aicoho^on^^ 
of its effects on mothers and their offspring during preg- '^o^'^ers and 
nancy and lactation. For England, indeed, it is a question spring a 
of the gravest moment to her future independence. Owing question of 
chiefly to the fatal " Grocers' Licences Act," there is more importance, 
drinking among the women of England to-day than among 
the women of any other civilized country. With the growd^h 
of this evil, in secret until its dimensions have stripped it 
of secresy, there has grown up a notion fostering the evil, 
and in turn fostered by it, that intoxicating liquors are 
especially beneficial to women during pregnancy and lacta- 
tion ; and I wish, therefore, in this chapter to draw par- 
ticular attention to this part of the subject. 

In chapter viii. it was pointed out that certain and 
terrible consequences befel the children and children's 
children of transgressing parents, and that the shocking 
results of alcoholic heredity were doubly certain when the 
mother was the drinker. 

But as nothing can be of more importance than the 
proper beginning of life, and as it is proven that nothing 
artificial does it greater general harm than alcohol, I 
quote here important medical testimony on this point 
dating from the opening of the present century. 

Dr. Thomas Trotter, in his Essay on DrunJcenness Dr_ Thomas 
(London, 1804), says, "Drink containinp" ardent spirits, Trotter on 

-u • -UJ11 r J. ' > this point. 

such as wine, punch, caudle ale, porter, must impregnate 
the milk, and thus the digestive organs of the babe must 
be quickly injured. These must suffer in proportion to 

* " At a meeting of the Manchester and Salford Temperance 
Union, Dr. Meacham said he was medical ofl&cer of health for the 
largest district in England, and no fewer than 49,000 patients had 
been under his care. For fourteen years he had not prescribed 
alcohol." — Temperance Review, March 6, 1884. 



218 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

the delicacy of tlieir texture, and tlie diseases wliicli flow 
from this source are certainly not uncommon ... it is 
well known that nurses are in the practice of giving spirits 
in the form of punch to young children to make them 
sleep. . . . Such children are known to be dull, drowsy, 
and stupid, bloated in the countenance, with eyes inflamed, 
subject to sickness at stomach, costive and pot-bellied. 
The body is often covered with eruptions, and slight 
scratches are disposed to ulcerate." 
Sir Anthony In 1814 Sir Anthony Carlisle said, '* Of all errors in 

the same. ^^^ employment of fermented liquors, that of giving them 
to children seems to be fraught with the worst consequences. 
The next in the order of mischief is their employment hy 
nurses, and which I suspect to be a common occasion of 
dropsy of the brain in young infants. I doubt much 
whether the future moral habits, the temper and intel- 
lectual propensities, are not greatly influenced by the early 
effects of fermented liquors upon the brain and sensorial 
organs." 
Dr. Roschon In The Ahuse of Intoxicating Liquors (Tiibingen, 1839), 
ai«)hr/^^^ Dr. Rosch, after condemning the custom of giving wine 
during to women in childbirth, says, " Many diseases of children 

owe their origin to the mother's use of spirituous liquors 
while nursing." 
Dr. Grindrod Dr. Grindrod {Bacchus, London, 1839) says — 

e same. u Alcoholic liquors propel the organs of nutrition and 

lactation to increased action, but it is an action unnatural 
and injurious in its effects. The organs employed in these 
important functions are regulated by laws on the due 
performance of which depends the fulfilment of Nature's 
intentions. Thus, for example, nutritious food forms the 
only natural stimulant for the healthy action of the 
stomach, and is the sole fountain of pure blood. Pure 
milk, which is essential to the health of the child, depends 
upon proper digestion. If the functions of the stomach 
act imperfectly, the secretion of milk must, as a necessary 
consequence, be defective. Hence whatever deranges the 
functions of the stomach interferes with the healthy 
lactation. The influence of alcoholic liquors on lactation 
may be considered in several points of view. In the first 
place they interfere with healthy digestion. In this way 
the quality of the milk secreted becomes deteriorated in 



THERAPEUTICS; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 219 

exact proportion to tlie amount of injurj inflicted on tlie 
organs of nutrition. In tlie second place they influence 
tlie quantity of tlie secretion. The vessels employed in 
this function, urged on by an alien impulse, produce an 
unusual and enlarged supply. It does not follow, however, 
that an increase in the amount of secretion is attended 
with a proportionate increase in the quantum of nutriment. 
The contrary is often the case. Milk may be secreted in 
large quantities ill calculated to supply the ends of nature. 
Hence numbers of puny emaciated children, the offspring 
of parents who indulge in strong drink." 

In his lectures on The Physiological Operation of Alcohol Dr. e. g. 
(1862), Dr. E. G-. Eigg, in speaking of the infant before fS''*''" 
birth and during lactation, says, "No one conversant alcohol pro- 
with the principle of foetal nutrition will feel disposed to pregnancy^^ 
controvert the opinion that the placenta is not only a lung and lactation. 
to the unborn infant, but a digestive system, performing 
the duty of the latter, by assuming at once the office of 
the stomach, an excreting intestine, a mesenteric gland, 
and an assimilative organ. Independently of imparting 
oxygen to the foetal blood in minute quantities, not 
adequate to its perfect arterialization, and taking up 
sustenance for it, the placenta removes impurities returned 
from the foetal body ; not as the stomach, does in the un- 
digested material, nor as chyle, like tbe thoracic duct, 
but in the maturely elaborated substance, transferred by 
exosmose in a manner incomprehensible, inasmucb as the 
membranous parieties of the placental cells appear to the 
microscope impermeable to matter in a form so gross as 
atoms of fibrine. 

" Whatever doubt may exist as to the modus operandi, 
there is none whatever as to the fact ; of which any one 
may convince himself by examination of the surface of 
every third or fourth placenta delivered, which will be 
found coated with ossific deposits of carbonate and phos- 
phate of lime, wbicli substances being in the foetal depart- 
ment of that organ, could have reached it only through, 
tbe maternal cell- walls. The cows in the cotton districts 
of England, when fed on the refuse of madder and other 
vegetable dye stuffs, invariably stain the bones of the calf 
arite partum. Experience, however, does not favour the 
idea that the placenta exercises a selective discretion in 



220 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH, 

appropriating tliat wMcli may be ultimately available in 
the infant frame, for tbe placenta receives and circulates 
any poison or virus tbat may be presented in tbe maternal 
system. An infant in utero is often affected with variola, 
contemporaneously or immediately consecutive to the 
course of the disease in the mother. I have attended 
a patient in Asiatic cholera, and a week later delivered 
her of a dead foetus, in which the characteristic slate 
colour infallibly indicated the cause of dissolution. 

" These facts, even in a theoretical aspect, are quite 
sufficient to establish the rationality of the proposition 
that the alcohol swallowed by the pregnant mother must 
act injuriously on the child, not merely indirectly, by 
rendering the material transferred through the placenta 
unfit for incorporation with the foetal tissues, but dii^ectly, 
by affecting the nervous system of the foetus, just as it 
does that of the mother. 

" I may, in addition, appeal to the stethoscopic exami- 
nation of two pregnant women. During the progress of 
intoxication, though of course not synchronous, I found 
that whenever the mother's pulse was excited, so was the 
infant's heart. When the pulse of the parent, in a 
more advanced stage, became full and round, the beat 
of the heart in the child assumed a similar character; 
and when feeble and compressible in collapse, the heart 
of the foetus was scarcely audible. What inference could 
be drawn fi^om the circumstances, but that when the 
mother got drunk, the child got drunk ; when the mother 
became insensible, the child became insensible ; and 
when the mother was collapsed, the child was so also ? 
Every midwife is acquainted with the effect produced 
on the majority of healthy foeti, if the cold hand be 
suddenly placed over the maternal hypogastric region. 
The infant, influenced by a kind of instinctive con- 
sciousness, springs from its position, imparting a sensible 
impulse to the practitioner's hand through the uterine 
parieties and intervening muscles, thus yielding as good 
a test of the viable condition of the child as the stethoscope 
could give. In one of the women I never could excite 
these movements during her drinking fits, though in the 
other eminently present in the incipient stage of intoxica- 
tion, but not producible after. I attended another, who 



THERAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICIXE. 221 

dated tlie death of lier infant from an act of excess. Tlie 
child never moved subsequently to her intoxication, and 
the premonitory symptoms of labour occurred in eight 
days. 

" In nursing mothers we have the same routine of mani- 
festations, with a very slight variation in the preliminary 
circumstances. The breast here supersedes the placenta 
as the paramount organ in Nature's regards. The nutritious 
extracts from the food replenish in the first instance this 
repository of the infant's support, the maternal economy 
(at this crisis a less important consideration) receiving 
only the surplus contributions from the digestive system. 
So thoroughly insufficient is the mother's alcoholized 
system for the double task of maintaining herself and 
progeny, that we are warranted in placing the prosperity 
of the infant in juxtaposition with that of the parent. If 
the child becomes robust the mother becomes emaciated ; 
vice versa, a robust, plethoric mother almost always insures 
a cadaverous, debilitated infant. In asserting that the 
essence of the food passes at once to the breast, without 
adoption by the maternal tissues, I advance a theory con- 
sistent with all analogy. If a cow be fed on turnips, she 
imparts the peculiar odour of that vegetable to her milk. 
The action of a di'astic purgative taken by the mother is 
established in the infant at the breast. Thi^ough the 
same medium the dysentery in the mother is transferred 
to her child, commencing in aphthous ulceration of the 
mouth, extending by continuity through the whole in- 
testinal canal, and resulting in the characteristic dis- 
charges. So I have seen the disease arrested in both by 
the astringent principle of the opiates administered to 
the parent, acting simultaneously and keeping the infant 
in a somnolent condition. In this country, among the 
lower classes, a glass of spirit taJcen hy the mother is a 
popular and often effectual remedy for the tormma (gripes, 
colic) of an infant. We can guess at the quantity which 
finds its way to the breasts by the effect. If the child be 
fed from a cup, a large teaspoonful of spirit is often added 
to a single meal, even when the recipient is not more than 
a week old, that quantity being barely sufficient for the 
purpose. This fact affords at least an approximate 
standard for calculation as to the proportion of alcohol 



222 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

in eacli glass of spirit wMcli reached the infant after con- 
sumption by the mother; and is, therefore, an excellent 
rule for ascertaining the quantity passed through the 
infant's system when the mother is habitually dissipated, 
or perhaps erroneously attempts to relieve the niental 
depression or corporeal exhaustion incidental to lactation 
by an occasional glass. My acknowledgments are due to 
Dr. Mackenzie, for his kindness in analyzing to the best 
of his ability two specimens of milk sent by me for that 
purpose, which were obtained from nursing mothers, of 
nearly the same age, of the same social rank, and three 
months after parturition. One was a temperate woman 
in robust health, and substantially fed, whose milk con- 
stituted the only sustenance of her child. The other was 
an emaciated drinker whose infant presented a miniature 
of herself. 



Milk of temperate mother. 


Milk of drinking mother. 


Salts 8-50 


Salts ... ... 5-50 


Casein 3'0 


Casein 2-0 


Oil 7-50 


Oil 6-5 


Water Sl'O 


Water 84-0 




Alcohol 2-0 



1000 100-0 

Dr. E.Smith ^^ ^is Practical Dietary (London, 1865), Dr. Edward 
on the use Smith gives like testimony in these words: "Alcohols 
during lacta- are largely used by many persons in the belief that they 
tion. support the system and maintain the supply of milk for 

the infant ; bat I am convinced that this is a serious error, 
and is not an unfrequent cause of fits and emaciation in the 
child:' 
Dr. James In his paper on Alcoholic JDrinlcs as an Article of Diet 

SieXeTfor^ /^^ ^'^'^^'^'^9 Mothers (Medical Temperance Journal, July, 
nursing 1870), Dr. Edmunds, then senior physician to the British 
mothers. Lying-in Hospital, thus puts this matter : — " The masti- 
cation, digestion, and primary assimilation of the sucking 
infant's food is thrown upon the mother's organs ; but 
the tissues of the child are nourished precisely as are the 
tissues of the mother, and a nursing mother requires 
simply to digest a larger supply of wholesome and 
appropriate food. As a matter of course mothers with 
imperfect teeth or weak stomachs cannot perform the 



THEKAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 223 

digestion of extra food for tlie infant so well as those 
motliers who have an abundance of reserve power in their 
digestive apparatus, and with such patients the question 
arises, how are they to make up for the deficiency which 
they soon experience in the supply of milk ? They should 
assist their digestive apparatus as much as possible by 
securing an abundance of suitable and nutritious food, 
prepared in the best way and as is most digestible, while 
they should lessen the demands of their own system by 
the avoidance of bodily fatigue and mental excitement. 
These means, aided by that philosophical hygiene which 
is at all times essential to the preservation of pure and 
perfect health, will enable them to supply a maximum 
quantity of pure and wholesome milk; farther calls 
by the child require proper artificial food. Unfortunately 
such advice fails to satisfy many anxious mothers, who 
refuse to admit or believe that they are less robust or less 
capable than other ladies of their acquaintance, and such 
mothers fall easy victims to circulars vaunting the nourish- 
ing properties of ' Hoare's Stout,' ' Tanqueray's Gin,' 
or Gilbey's ' strengthening Port,' circulars which are 
always backed up by the example and advice of lady 
friends, who themselves have acquired the habit of using 
these liquors, and who view as a reproach to themselves 
the practice of any other lady who may not keep them in 
countenance as the perfection of all moral and physical 
propriety. It is a matter of common observation that a 
glass of spirit taken at bedtime by a nursing mother, not 
merely increases the flow of milk during the night, but 
causes the child to sleep heavily. Under these circum- 
stances the spirit acts, not as a purgative, nor as a diuretic, 
nor as a diaphoretic, nor does much of it pass off by the 
lungs, but it acts as a lactagogue, because the breasts are 
then in a state of great activity, and form the readiest 
channel through which the mother's system can eliminate 
the alcohol. In order to efl:ect that elimination the breasts 
have to discharge a prof user quantity of milk ; but the 
increased quantity of milk is produced by a mere addition 
of alcohol and water, or it is produced by impoverishing 
and straining the system of the mother. In either case 
the poisonous influence of the alcohol is manifested in 
narcotizing the child, and it cannot need much reflection 



224 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

to stow that children onglit not to liave alcohol filtered 
into them as receptacles for matters which the mother's 
system finds it necessary to eliminate. Probably nothing 
could be worse than to have the very fabric of the .child's 
tissues laid down from alcoholized blood." 
Dr. Edmunds Of the effects of beer-drinking, he says, ' I have 
effects^?'^**^ observed the following facts : — The mothers frequently 
beer-drink- make flcsh, and even become corpulent ; often, however, at 
lactatioi?^ the same time they get pale, and where they are not con- 
stitutionally robust in fibre they become inactive, short- 
breathed, coarse-complexioned, nervous, and irritable, and 
suffer from weakness of the heart and a long train of 
symptoms which are more or less severe according to 
the constitution of the mother and the quantity of alcohol 
she imbibes. The young mother prematurely loses the 
bloom and beauty of youth. Often it is quite startling to 
meet some lady, who during an interval of two years has 
been transformed from a sprightly and charming young 
woman into an uninteresting coarse-looking matron. She 
has nursed her first infant for twelve months. With a 
pure and rational diet, she would simply have acquired 
a more dignified and womanly bearing, with a robuster 
gentleness of manner ; but a liberal supply of ' nourish- 
ing ' stout, a glass of port at luncheon, and a little gin- 
and- water at bedtime, one after the other were adopted, 
and imbibed regularly, in order to supply her infant with 
'milk.' The presence of a nerveless apathy, or unin- 
telligent irritability, afterwards proved that a liberal 
supply of ' stimulants ' was required to support her 
strength, and, although she ceased nursing, her own sensa- 
tions convinced her of the necessity of continuing them. 
The outward and visible change is but an exponent of the 
degenerations and diseases which are taking root within. 
If there be a predisposition to insanity or consumption, 
these diseases are developed very rapidly, or they are 
brought on where proper management might altogether 
have tided over those periods of life at which the predis- 
position is prone to become provoked into actual disease. 

" Infants nursed by mothers who drink much beer also 
become fatter than usual, and to an untrained eye some- 
times appear as ' magnificent children.' But the fatness of 
such children is not a recommendation to the more know- 



THERAPEUTICS ; OR, ALCOHOL AS A MEDICINE. 225 

ing observer ; tliey are exceedingly prone to die of inflam- 
mation of tJbe chest (broncliitis) after a few days' illness 
from an ordinary cold. They die very much, more fre- 
quently than other children of convulsions and diarrhoea 
while cutting their teeth, and they are very liable to die 
of scrofulous inflammation of the membranes of the brain, 
commonly called " water on the brain," while their child- 
hood often presents a painful contrast — in the way of 
crooked legs and stunted or ill-shapen figure — to the 
' magnificent and promising appearance of their infancy.' " 

And Dr. Harrison Branthwaite, in his first annual Dr. Branth- 
report on The Sanitary Condition of Willesden (1882), Sdidmor- 
speaks feelingly of the increase in child-mortality, and taiityfrom 
deplores "the pernicious habit of drinking large quantities ale and stout 
of ale or stout by nursing mothers, under the idea that f^^^tfoii 
they thereby increase and improve the secretion of milk, 
whereas they are in reality deteriorating the quality of 
-that upon which the infant must depend for health and 
life." 

On the 8th of January, 1881, Dr. J. C. Reid wrote to the Dr. J. c. 
British Medical Journal: "Truly he is a happy man — ingagaTnsT" 
a happy doctor I should say — who can honestly affirm that 
he never, by his alcoholic prescriptions, made a drunkard. 
For myself, in my earlier days I was a firm believer in the 
many supposed virtues of alcoholic compounds. It is 
about fourteen years ago that the scales were removed 
from my eyes by the stem reality of facts, and my sole 
regret now is that I held out so long against evidence of 
the most startling kind. 

" Many years ago, when I asked a noted drunkard to 
sign the pledge, she replied bitterly that I was the last 
man who ought to give her such advice. For it was my 
own father who had taught her to love the drink. He 
had prescribed whiskey for her in an illness, and she had 
learned to love it. I succeeded with her for fifteen months, 
but after that she fell into the old miserable habit." 



alcoholic 
prescription. 



226 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



CHAPTER X. 

SOCIAL RESULTS, OR THE GENERAL EFFECTS ON SOCIETY CAUSED 
BY ALCOHOL. 

"Not one man in a thousand dies a natural death, and most diseases 
have their rise from intemperance." — Lord Bacon. 

" People dread cholera, but brandy is a far worse plague." — 
Balzac. 

*' If alcohol were unknown, half the sin and three quarters of 
the poverty and unhappiness would disappear from the world." — 
Edmund A. Parkes. 

" Short of drunkenness (that is, in those effects of it which stop 
short of drunkenness), I should say, from my experience, that alcohol 
is the most destructive agent we are aware of in this country." 
— Sir William G-ull before the Lords' Select Committee of inquiry 
into prevalence of intemperance, 1877. 

§ 60. In tlie preceding cliapters I have endeavoured to 
point out tlie multifarious deep-reacHng evils which 
alcohol entails on the individual who indulges in its use. 
In this chapter I shall try to show how generally these 
effects have been produced; i.e., how many persons are 
suffering from the habit of di'ink, and in what way and 
degree it has acted on society and the State, especially 
^ in regard to this country (England) . 
General To this end, which I can only hope to reach approxi- 

statistics. niately, I must make use of statistics — both governmental 
and others — which throw light on these points. And the 
enormous amount of available statistics on this matter, 
together with their scope ; the almost impossibility of 
making any brief, and at the same time clear statistical 
statement ; and the latitude of interpretation which almost 
all statistics afford, has made this portion of the work very 
difficult. 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 227 

Modern Governmeiit statistics are definite, and convey 
a definite meaning, but their purport may be modifiable 
by a hundred different circumstances understood and 
allowed for by few, excepting trained statisticians. Not- 
withstanding this, I cannot agree with those who deem 
that to the general public, statistics are not worth their 
cost in paper and ink. 

All statistics have a great worth negatively at least ; 
that is, as showing that the minimum of a national condi- 
tion of prosperity or decline has been fairly ascertained. 
Non- personal statistics, or such as relate to the gross 
amount of produce, manufactures, food, drink, their cost, 
etc., have even a positive value; but those relating to 
persons — excepting births, deaths, marriages, and the like 
— all statistics involving self-interests, whether for conceal- 
ing income, escaping taxation, or avoiding uncompensated 
labour or expenditure of time in any way, or for escaping 
the law, etc., etc., have only a comparatively negative value. 

Statistics, for example, regarding convictions for 
drunkenness have only the value of showing how many 
people the repressive force of the State has found it neces- 
sary to punish for having deliberately entered into a 
personally irresponsible condition. But this would afford 
not even relatively correct information as to the existing 
amount of drunkenness. In the first place, intoxicated 
people, if not incapable, or deserted, or dangerously 
violent, are seldom arrested. Again, no police officer ven- 
tures into private homes merely because there are drunken 
people there ; he does not interfere with any peaceful 
transfer of a drunken person from the place of drinking to 
his home ; and any one who will take the trouble of looking 
into public-houses, especially early in the mornings and 
late at night, can form some idea of the inadequacy of the 
police returns on drunkenness as a real indication of the 
condition of the people on this point.* 

* In giving the aggregates of tlie Blach List of crimes due to 
drink in England dnring the Christinas week of 1883, and the first 
week of 1884, as follows : — 

26 perilous accidents through drink, 
13 robberies through drink, 

5 cases of drunken insanity, 
63 drunken outrages and violent assaults, 



•228 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Incon- 
sistency of 
the attitude 
of Parlia- 
ment toward 
the drink- 
question. 



Again, many inebriates escape from arrest, or if arrested 
are not counted in with the convicted, "being saved by 
intercession,* personal influence, position, birth, etc. 

If thoughtful analysis of the ruin which alcohol works 
for the individual, strengthened by the continual spectacle 
of its ghastly effects which our homes and our streets 
afford — if these do not awaken a sense of the paramount 
duty of each and all to banish alcohol for ever from the 
lips of mankind, then no statistics, however terrible, 
conclusive, and undeniable, could be of avail. 

§ 61. With some notable individual exceptions, Parlia- 
ment does not yet seem to be impressed with its responsi- 
bility in the battle against drink ; for although appalling 
statistics, steadily increasing in dimensions, of crimes and 
insanity, unanimously admitted to be the results of drink, 
are annually laid before its members, yet petitions from 
towns and whole counties signed by overwhelming 
majorities appeal in vain to Parliament to be allowed to 
banish the temptation of drink from their midst, or that 
the number of places for the sale of alcoholic drinks may 
be limited. 

And yet as long ago as 1819-20, the British Parlia- 

20 drunken stabbings, cuttings, and woundings, 
5 cases of drunken cruelty to children, 

74 assaults on women through, drink, 

13 cases of juvenile intoxication, 

70 drunken assaults on constables, 

94 premature, sudden, or violent deaths through drink, 

18 cases of suicide attempted through drink, 

15 cases of drunken suicide completed, and 

12 drunken manslaughters or murders, 
the Alliance News (January 26, 1884) says, *' And besides this, it 
must be borne in mind that the reporters for the press are by no 
means alv^ays disposed or enabled to record the part which strong 
drink has manifestly had in the cases which they chronicle. A 
Scottish correspondent, in sending in his contributions to the Black 
List, writes that ' There were nearly as many cases which we might 
have legitimately inferred were equally due to drink, but as liquor 
was not directly charged with the evil we had to do without the 
record.' No doubt a similar remark might have been made by all 
our coadjutors." 

* " A Plymouth publican was yesterday charged with having 
drunken women on his premises after closing time. He proved that 
they were lodgers, and the charge was dismissed." — Echo (February 
1, 1884). 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 229 

mentary Committee on Drink stated that " public-houses 
can only be regarded as Schools of Iniquity.''^ 

The moral inertia of Parliament as regards this evil 
is conspicuous in the continued Government supply of 
alcoholic drinks to the inmates of the workhouses. 

The Canterbury Convocations, in their report several 
years ago on drink, said — 

" It appears, indeed, that at least seventy-five per cent, 
of the occupants of our workhouses, and a large proportion 
of those receiving outdoor relief, have become pensioners 
on the public directly or indirectly through drunkenness." 

This inertia is the more inexplicable when we remember 
that it must be patent to legislators and governments that 
the desperate spectre for years threatening Europe with 
the assassination of her rulers and the overthrow of the 
established order of things, is the alcohol- goaded despair, 
not of stolid but of naturally earnest minds.* 

They cannot be blind to the fact that the fitfulness and 
the unintelligence of popular favour, the irrationality 
and perversion of public opinion, as well as the dogged 
adherence to a bad measure once advocated — as if the 
mind groping and fumbling in a dark chamber, having 
grasped something, hangs to it without any thought of 
its meaning or use — are largely due to the general mental 
derangement which general indulgence in alcohol induces. 

Why do so many of the noblest thinkers of our time — 
those who have looked seriously into the problems which 
modern civilization presents — why do they despair of the 
future of the race ? Why is the general turn of mind in 
our age stoically pessimistic or cynically materialistic ? 

Why indeed ? unless it is that the later generations 
of men, inheritors and fui-ther developers of the insidious 
poison of alcohol, are becoming in mind, as in body, des- 
sicated, life-sucked, so that the whole civilized race is not 
only crumbling physically! (however imperceptibly to the 

* Says Jolm Disney, in Ancient Laws against Immorality (Cam. 
bridge, 1729):— 

" The vice of intemperance debases tlie genins and spirit of a 
nation ; indisposes them to noble designs and generous actions ; and 
either softens them to an effeminate indolence for the public welfare, 
or fires them to seditious tumults." 

t Sir Henry Thompson, writing (March 15, 1873) to the late 
Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Archibald Campbell Tait), claimed 



230 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Various 
weighty 
opinions on 
destructive 
effects of 
alcohol upon 
society. 
BufFou. 
H. W. 
Beecher. 



careless and indifferent) , but seems to be dwindling morally 
into two more or less intercbangeable but distinct types ; 
the one not believing in tbe verity of God or tbe faitb of 
man, without hope and without emotion — existing, indeed, 
only in a narrow line of cynical intellectual activity ; the 
other, alternating between weakened faith and craven 
doubt, tossed by dark passions, temptations, and furies, 
not the least of which are momentary spiritual exaltations, 
mocked by and toppling over in swiftly succeeding debility 
and despair. 

Both these types wear a deceivingly fair exterior. We 
often see magnificent boughs and beautiful foliage on trees 
whose trunks are but hollow crusts, worm-eaten from core 
to rim. For fruit, or fuel, or for weathering the storm 
such a tree is naught, but yet the specious trunk manages 
to hold up and flaunt the fair foliage ! 

§ 62. Every one knows that abstinence is the exception 
and drinking — whether moderate or excessive — the rule. 
And those who, bearing this in mind, have attentively read 
the preceding pages can feel what the results must be, far 
more adequately than the most eloquent pen could portray 
them, and will not find it difficult to credit that almost 
the whole state machinery of repression and punishment 
of crime, the whole army of police, detectives, judges, 
jailers, and hangmen, and the vast misery and expense of 
jails and lunatic asylums — yes, the asylums for idiots and 
the defective classes — might be done away with if — oh! 
what a mighty if! — people would not touch alcoholic 
liquors. 

In practical testimony to this truth I may cite the 
following authorities : — 

" Drink alone destroys — ruins — more people than all 
the other plagues together, which afflict humanity."—- 
Buffon's Discourse on Nature (1765). 

" Every year I live increases my conviction that the 
use of intoxicating drinks is a greater destroying force to 
life and virtue than all other physical evils combined." — 
H. W. Beecher to Young Men's Christian Association, New 
York (1862). 



that drinking 
it for advance. 



tends to deteriorate the race 



and disqualifies 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 231 

" The use of strong drink produces more idleness, The Times. 
crime, disease, want, and misery than ail other causes put 
together." — Times (January 19, 1863). 

" After running over the statistics of death from drink Dr. Germaiu 
published in the various countries, after attending for ^^rty. 
some years the clinique of the great Parisian hospitals, 
after consulting the registry of cases admitted to ' homes 
for strangers,' one becomes perfectly convinced that 
alcoholic poisoning is a more murderous plague, perhaps, 
than the great epidemics which at diiferent epochs have 
devastated humanity. The pest, the cholera, the yellow 
fever, break out suddenly and decimate a village, a province, 
a whole country, but their passage is transitory in essence. 
Alcoholism takes no holiday.^' — Dr. Germain Marty 
{Medical Thesis, Paris, December 24, 1872). 

" It has been said that greater calamities are inflicted w. e. Giad- 
on mankind by intemperance than by the three great ^^o^®- 
~ historical scourges, war, pestilence, and famine. This is 
true for us, and it is the measure of our discredit and 
disgrace." — W. E. Gladstone (speech in House of Commons, 
March 6, 1880). 

Who can speak more authoritatively, or with more Opinions of 
impartiality, concerning the relations between drink and onhe*^^^^ 
crime, than the judges of Great Britain ? * And what United 
do they say ? Let us see. ^^ ^^' 

" I have been thii^ty years chairman of quarter sessions M.O'Shaugh- 
in several counties in Ireland. I have, perhaps, presided '^^'^^y- 
at more criminal trials than most men living, and 1 can 
truly say that I have had scarcely a case before me with 
reference to the class of offences known as against the 
person, that was not the consequence of drunkenness." — ■ 
Mr. M. O'Shaughnessy, Q.C., Chairman of Quarter Sessions, 
Co. Clare. 

" Men go into public-houses respectable, and come out Mr. Justice 
felons." — Mr. Justice Grove. 

" The crying and besetting crime of intemperance is a Mr. Justice 
crime leading to all other crimes ; a crime which yoa may ^^^^sera . 
very well say leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crimes of 
this country." — Mr. Justice Fitzgerald, Dublin Assizes, 
1878. 

* See opening pages of chap. viii. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Baron 
Huddleston. 



" If our people were more sober I tMnk crime would 
almost entirely disappear from our midst." — Baron Dowse, 
at Wicklow, 1878. 

Again, in charging tlie jury in tlie Dublin Commission 
Court, November, 1881, the Baron said be " found tbat 
drink was at tbe bottom of almost every crime committed 
in Dublin. Even in cases thai had no apparent connection 
with drinh at all, if closely investigated, as he himself had 
done on many occasions, they would he found to have their 
origin in drinh.''^ 

Tbe Bench of England confirms tbe Bencb of Ireland. 
In 1878 tbe stipendiary magistrate of Liverpool said — 

" Tbe moving cause of crimes of violence and disorder 
in our midst is drunkenness. We may set down tbree- 
fourtbs, I tbink nine-tentbs of tbem, as arising fi^om 
drunkenness." 

In 1881 Lord Cbief Justice Coleridge stated from tbe 
bencb of tbe Supreme Court, tbat " Judges were weary 
witb calling attention to drink as tbe principal cause of 
crime, but be could not refrain from saying tbat if tbey 
could make England sober tbey would sbut up nine-tentbs 
of tbe prisons." 

In bis charge at the Surrey Assizes, in August, 1882, 
Mr. Justice Denman said — 

" I don't know, in enforcing the considerations which 
are placed before the judges as a part of their duty in the 
proclamation against vice and immorality which has just 
been read, tbat any judge can better discharge his duty 
than by again and again calling tbe attention of the gentry 
of the country, as well as inhabitants generally, to this 
fact, that tbe gi^eat bulk — I might almost say the whole 
— of the offences of violence which take place in the 
counties of this land are directly ascribable to the habit 
of drinking." 

In the same month and year Baron Huddleston is 
reported to have said to the grand jury at Swansea tbat — 

" Of the forty-four cases down on the calendar, he found 
almost all traceable, directly or indirectly, to the detestable 
habit of drinking. Two hundred years ago. Sir Matthew 
Hale, one of tbe most eminent judges tbat ever adorned 
the English bench, declared tbat twenty years of observa- 
tion taught him tbat the original cause of most of tbe 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 233 

enormities committed by criminals was drink. Four out 
of every five of them were the issue and product of drink- 
ing in taverns and alehouses. Baron Huddleston feared 
what was true then was true now, and that we have 
improved very little, if at all." 

At the Chester Spring Assizes, on the 13th of April, Mr. Justice 
1883, Mr. Justice Hawkins, in charging the grand jury, Hawkins, 
said that — 

" Although, numerically, the calendar was light, yet 
there were in it charges recorded against several persons 
of most serious offences. After referring to other cases, 
his lordship touched upon the attempted murder of a child 
by its mother by throwing it upon the fire, then pouring 
scalding water upon it. The mother was under the in- 
fluence of drink, and it was almost always the case, accord- 
ing to his experience, that drink was at the root of crime. 
Nine out of every ten crimes of violence that had come 
before him were in one way or another attributable to 
drink." 

Again, on the 16th of July, 1883, Mr. Justice Hawkins 
is reported to have said, in charging the grand jury at 
the opening of the Durham Assizes, that he — 

" Had had considerable experience in courts of law, 
and every day he lived the more firmly did he cor/ie to the 
conclusion that the root of all crime was drinlc. It affected 
people of all ages and both sexes — the middle-aged, the 
young, the father, the son, the husband, and the wife. 
It was drink which was the incentive to crimes of 
dishonesty ; a man stole in order that he might provide 
himself with the means of getting drink. It was drink 
which caused homes to be impoverished, and they could 
trace to its source the cause of misery which was to be 
found in many a cottage home which had been denuded of 
all the common necessities of life. He believed that nine- 
tenths of the crivie of this country, and certainly of the county 
of Durham., was engendered within public-houses* When 
he came to that conclusion he thought it was. his duty to 
enjoin upon the magistrates who had the power to check 
in some respect the terrible ravages of drink, to do their 
utmost to suppress it with all the power and authority 
with which, the law invested them. The county of 
* See opening pages of chap. viii. 



234 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. William 
Hoyle's 
drink 
statistics. 



The Rev. Dr. 
Dawson 
Burns on the 
expenditure 
of the 

British Isles 
annually in 
drink as 
compared 
with other 
expenditure. 



Durham was the one conntj in all England where crime 
was most prevalent." 

§ 63. The statistics quoted below are principally taken 
from various parts of the work of the indefatigable and 
admittedly the best statistician on the subject of drink 
— Mr. William Hoyle. 

Commenting, in a leading article of great ability, on 
Mr. Hoyle's statistics, the Times (March 29, 1881) says, 
" Drinking baffles us, confounds us, shames us, and mocks 
at us at every point. It outwits alike the teacher, the 
man of business, the patriot, and the legislator. Every 
other institution flounders in hopeless difficulties ; the 
public-house holds its triumphant course. The adminis- 
trators of public and private charity are told that alms 
and oblations go with rates, doles, and pensions to the 
all-absorbing bar of the public-house." 

Estimating roughly in round numbers, so as to leave 
more room for a comparative computation of vast numbers, 
we find that the average of the gross total of the national 
income during the last ten years (ending in 1881) was 
£850,000,000 a year. According to Hoyle, the direct 
average expenditure for drink annually, during the same 
time exceeded £136,000,000, and he estimates that annually 
£138,000,000 were indirectly spent or lost through drink — 
a total drinking expenditure of £274,000,000. 

"Deducting, say, £54,000,000 from this sum for 
revenue," says Hoyle, " and for what some persons might 
consider the needful use of these drinks in medicine or 
otherwise, it still leaves a sum of £220,000,000 as the 
annual economic loss to the nation in consequence of the 
drinking customs of our population." 

The Rev. Dr. Dawson Burns, in Christendom and the 
Drink Curse (London, 1875), makes this succinct summary 
of the comparative loss to the nation annually occasioned 
by drink : — " The British people annually expend on in- 
toxicating liquors a sum of above a hundred and thirty 
millions sterling, the great bulk of it coming from the 
pockets of men and women who would be seriously affronted 
if any doubt were cast upon their religious sincerity. This 
sum is sixty millions in excess of the national revenue. It 
is one-sixth of the National Debt. It is one-fifth the value 
of all the railway property of the United Kingdom. It is 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 235 

equal to one-fourtli of tlie whole income of the wage- 
receiving classes, and one-eighth of the income of all classes 
united. It is equal to a yearly expenditure of £4 per head, 
and of £22 per family, in the United Kingdom." 

In a paper read before the Statistical Society of London Mr. Stephen 
(April, 1880), Mr. Stephen Bourne, a noted statistician, thTsame.^ 
arrived at similar results to Mr. Hoyle's, but from an 
opposite point of view. 

Mr. Hoyle estimates the harm done from computing the 
pecuniary loss ; Mr. Bourne computes the pecuniary loss 
from the harm done. The National Temperance League 
Annual (1883) gives the following summary of Mr. Bourne's 
paper : — 

"Mr. Bourne estimates that of the people of this 
country about 10|^ millions are ' producers ; ' that of these 
' 65 or 70 per cent, are wholly employed in providing food, 
drink, and other necessaries of life ; and that it is only the 
remainder (three millions and a half) who are available 
for the production of luxuries, and the accumulation of 
wealth.' He further estimates that the producing power 
of 1,097,625 persons is wholly absorbed by the liquor traffic : 
and that 884,000 who might be employed as producers of 
wealth, are rendered economically useless by the damage 
done by drink. The latter number being made up as 
follows : — 



' By deaths, adnlt and infantile 


... 120,000 


„ sickness of producers 


150,000 




, „ administrators 


... 185,000 




, pauperism 


200,000 




, crime 


... 88,000 




, professional and other service 


50,000 




, revenue officials 


6,000 




, army, navy, and merchant service ... 


85,000 
884,000' 



" If there was no alcohol to be produced or consumed 
there might be two millions of producers, or an addition 
of 60 per cent, to our power of producing articles other 
than those of daily use for stores. That is, as two millions 
constitute about a fifth of the total number of producers, 
the drink traffic absorbs about one-fifth of the productive 
power of the nation. And the total income of the nation — 
the total product of the industry of the nation, is variously 



Zlib THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

estimated at from 850 millions to 1200 millions a year. 
Mr. Gladstone puts it at about 1000 millions a year. One- 
fifth of this sum is 200 millions. So that, measured in 
money, the yearly cost of the drink traffic to the nation is 
about 200 millions, a sum which approximates very closely 
to that reached by Mr. Hoyle." 

Roaghly estimating the average liquor revenue during 
the same ten years (1871-1881) at £32,000,000 annually, 
and subtracting half this sum as the admitted average 
amount which the State expends in preventing, repairing, 
and punishing evils resulting from drink, we find that the 
State annually expends between 150 and 200 million pounds 
— most of which might be saved to the people — in order to 
make sure of its own annual revenue of from fifteen to 
twenty million pounds. 
Mr. Hoyie's In the Drink Traffic and its Evils, Mr. Hoyle makes the 

Traffi?and following comparison of estimates : — " To manufacture 
its Evils." the £134,000,000 worth of intoxicating liquors consumed 
during each of the past twelve years, 80,000,000 bushels of 
grain, or its equivalent in produce, has been destroyed 
each year ; and, taking the bushel of barley at 53 lbs., it 
gives us 4,240,000,000 lbs. of food destroyed year by year, 
or a total for the twelve years of 960,000,000 bushels or 
50,880,000,000 lbs. 

"The generally accepted estimate of grain consumed as 
bread food by the population of the United Kingdom is 
5^ bushels per head per annum ; if this be so, then, the 
food which has been destroyed to manufacture the intoxi- 
cating liquors which have been consumed in the United 
Kingdom during the past twelve years would supply the 
entire population with bread for four years and five months ; 
or, it would give a 4-lb. loaf of bread to every family in the 
United Kingdom daily during the next six years. 

" If the grain and produce which have thus been de- 
stroyed yearly were converted into flour and baked into 
loaves, they would make 1,200,000,000 4-lb. loaves. To 
bake these loaves it would require 750 bakeries producing 
500 loaves each hour, and working ten hours daily during 
the whole year. 

" An acre of fairly good land is estimated to yield about 
38 bushels of barley. If this be so, then, to grow the 
grain to manufacture the £134,000,000 worth of liquor 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 



237 



whicli has been consumed yearly, it would take a cornfield 
of more than 2,000,000 acres, or it would cover the entire 
counties of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, and Berkshire.* 

" The value of tlie bread consumed annually in the 
United Kingdom is estimated at £70,000,000. Mr. Caird 
estimates the value of the butter and cheese consumed 
yearly at £27,500,000, and that of milk at £26,000,000, 
so that we have spent as much upon intoxicating liquors 
each, year during tbe past twelve years as upon bread, 
butter, cheese, and milk, and leaving £10,000,000 yearly 
to spare. 

" Tbe rent paid for houses in tbe United Kingdom is 

* " Table showing the Population, Total Cost, and Average Cost 
PER Head op Intoxicating Liquors in the United Kingdom 
FOR various Tears prom 1820 to 1870, and por each sub- 
sequent Year up to 1882. 



Year. 


Population. 


Total cost. 


Average cost 
per head. 






£ 


£ s. d. 


1820 


20,807,000 


50,440,655 


2 8 6 


1825 


22,571,000 


67,027,263 


2 19 5 


1830 


23,820,000 


67,292,278 


2 16 5 


1835 


25,443,000 


80,527,819 


3 3 


1840 


26,500,000 


77,605,882 


2 18 10 


1845 


27,072,000 


71,632,232 


2 12 11 


1850 


27,320,000 


80,718,083 


2 18 10 


1855 


28,183,000 


76,761,114 


2 14 6 


1860 


28,778,000 


85,276,870 


2 18 6 


1865 


29,861,000 


106,439,561 


3 11 3 


1870 


31,205,000 


118,736,279 


3 16 1 


1871 


31,513,000 


125,586,902 


3 19 1 


1872 


31,835,000 


131,601,490 


4 2 8 


1873 


32,124,000 


140,014,712 


4 7 8 


1874 


32,426,000 


141,342,997 


4 7 2 


1875 


32,749,000 


142,876,669 


4 7 3 


1876 


33,093,000 


147,288,759 


4 9 


1877 


33,446,000 


142,007,231 


4 4 10 


1878 


33,799,000 


142,188,900 


4 4 1 


1879 


34,155,000 


128,143,865 


3 15 


1880 


34,468,000 


122,279,275 


3 10 11 


1881 


34,929,000 


127,074,460 


3 12 3 


1882 


35,278,000 


126,255,139 


3 12 0' 



— William Hoyle's Our National Brink Bill as it affects the Nation's 
Well-being. London, 1884. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

about £70,000,000 per annum ; tlie money spent yearly 
upon woollen goods is about £46,000,000, and upon cotton 
goods £14,000,000, giving a total of £130,000,000; so 
that we have spent upon intoxicating drinks each year 
during the last twelve years as much as the total amount 
of the house-rental of the United Kingdom plus the 
money spent in woollen and cotton goods, and leaving 
upwards of £4,000,000 to spare." 

According to the Daily Review of Edinburgh (March 4, 
1884), Sir William Collins, at the great Scottish Temperance 
Convention (of the day previous), after moving the first reso- 
lution, to wit, " That in the opinion of this convention, the 
traffic in intoxicating liquors, as common beverages, is a pro- 
lific source of drunkenness, insanity, pauperism, vice, crime, 
misery, disease, and death ; and whilst thus proving ruinous 
to individuals and families, is at the same time hurtful 
to the trade and commerce of the nation, and utterly 
opposed to the general prosperity and well-being of the 
community," said that, " Assuming that the population of 
Glasgow contributed their proportion to the national drink 
bill, it would amount to nearly £2,000,000 per annum, or 
£13 IO5. per family, while the whole rental of dwelling- 
houses in the city amounted to £1,233,371, or only 
£10 155. per family ; and the average rental of the houses 
in which two-thirds of the people lived was only £6 10s., 
or less than one-half of the average sum spent per family 
on strong drink. On the other hand, the only result of 
the yearly drink bill was a large expenditure in dealing 
with the crime, poverty, and insanity which flowed from 
the traffic as a natural result, and an untold amount of 
misery, disease, and death to the slaves of the appetite, 
and, would that he did not require to add, to the helpless 
wives and still more helpless and innocent children. 
Could they, as patriots and professing Christians, stand 
longer by, and allow this state of things to continue P The 
nations of the past, who stood in the front rank of civiliza- 
tion, where were they ? They fell because of their vices. 
Could they, who have had higher privileges, hope to escape 
from the consequences of their national vice and their 
national sin ? " 

And ex-Bailie Lewis, in a subsequent speech on the 
same occasion, said that " He had just been favoured with 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 239 

tlie able and elaborate report of Captain M'Call, of Glasgow, 
which aiffiorded evidence that during 1883 no fewer than 
52,827 of the population of Glasgow were before a police 
magistrate. Of that number 40,537 were charged with 
drunkenness, simple assaults, etc. ; and again, of that 
number 14,366 were dragged from the gutters and 
gathered from the streets drunk and incapable. They had 
thus 1 out of every 40 of the population drunk and in- 
capable ; 1 out of every 15 charged with drunkenness and 
assaults ; and 1 out of every 11 before a police magistrate. 
Such was the condition of the western metropolis, whose 
motto is, ' Let Glasgow flourish by the Preaching of the 
Word.' It was right to observe that numbers of these 
were recommitments, but when they considered the large 
number of drunken persons who never fell into the hands 
of the police, it did not materially alter the case." 



All these figures point with a vengeance to the relations The relations 
between drink and poverty. With the sum now annually ^^J^^^^nd 
wasted in and through drink, England could in a few poverty, 
years pay the entire N^ational Debt, and each individual 
could be comfortably housed, clothed, and fed. 

It is a common opinion that poverty has more to do in 
producing drink than drink in producing poverty, yet it 
must, from the foregoing startling figures, be perfectly 
obvious that there is no comparison between the two. 
The £130,000,000 expended in drink are the direct outlay 
only ; the best authorities declare that the mischief pro- 
duced by this drink, estimated in money, more than equals 
this sum, so that at least £250,000,000 form the gross total 
of the annual national loss through drink, which must 
inevitably produce a stupendous amount of poverty. That, 
in this production of poverty, many afilicted through it do 
not drink before being struck down by misfortune, is no 
doubt true ; but the great mass of the impoverished are 
so through drink, and further, though the poorer they 
become the less do they have to expend in drink, yet the 
little they do have is more certainly and exclusively spent 
in that way, to the utter neglect of every other claim or 
necessity. Thus drink first produces poverty, and then 
pushes it beyond the reach of remedy.* 

* " ' One in every eight of the population of rich and prosperous 



240 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Dawsott 
Burns on 
drinking as 
the main- 
spring of 
pauperism. 



That poverty causes drink in the sense that the 
wretchedly poor drink to drown their misery is probably 
in many instances trne ; but in this argument it is often 
forgotten that the abject poverty which drives this class 
of people (meaning here all who turn to drink not from 
vicious propensity, but under the goad of unbearable 
woes) to drink, is directly due to the circumstances and 
conditions as to work and wages, etc., which the drink 
traffic produces among the working classes, so that the 
honest, decent poor are beaten down in their struggle to 
keep on the level of decent poverty, and in their despair 
seek refuge in the very evil they have fought against at 
such heavy odds so long. 

" If all testimony is not fallacious," says the "Rev. Dr. 
Burns (op. cit.), "the mainspring of Pauperism and of all 
Destitution is Drinking ; and until that is overcome, little 
reduction of the measure or burdens of this evil can be 
expected. Any temporary diminution will disappear with 
fluctuations of trade that are certain to occur. Without 
a Temperance reform, every project for permanently 
ameliorating our national impoverishment must be com- 
paratively inefficient ; but with such a reform the desired 
end could be accomplished to such an extent that the 

England dies a pauper.' So we are told. Bat is not the statement 
altogether incredible ? Is there in all broad England one prominent 
statesman or one leading journalist who would believe it, if it were 
put before him ? I am convinced that there is not one. Yet it is 
substantially accurate. Here are the facts — some of the facts — on 
which it is based. In England and Wales during recent years, the 
number of paupers at one time receiving relief has averaged 800,000, 
Of these a little under 200,000 have been indoor, and a little over 
600,000 have been outdoor paupers. Among the indoor paupers the 
mortality is very great. The Eegistrar- General's returns show that 
the deaths among indoor paupers constitute one.fifteenth of the 
total number of deaths in the country. It is difficult fco ascertain 
with precision the number of deaths which yearly take place among 
the 600,000 outdoor paupers. Would it be extravagant to assume 
that the number of deaths (not the death rate) amongst them must 
be at least as great as among the 200,000 ? If it be assumed that 
the number of deaths (not the death rate, observe) among the 600,000 
is as great as among the 200,000 ; that is, if the death rate among the 
former is one-third as great as among the latter, we are shut in to 
the conclusion that of every fifteen deaths which take place in 
England and Wales, two are the deaths of paupers. And that is a 
greater proportion than one in eight." — Alliance News. 



SOCIAL KESULTS. 241 

worst forms of indigence and wretcliedness would become 
as rare as they are now common ; all dresses would be 
relieved, and it would be possible to extend adequate aid 
to those who are most deserving, but who now are either 
totally neglected or but scantily assisted," 

§ 64, This problem of poverty and degradation is now so 
prominently before the public that it seems specially fitting 
to call attention particularly to these evils as a result of 
drink — to which fact, testimony of a very striking character 
comes in on every side ; which, it is earnestly to be hoped, 
will receive due attention from the Royal Commission for 
devising means for housing the poor, now sitting. 

The report of the Parliamentary Committee on Drink Pariia- 
of 1834 says- _ Te^rtZiu- 

" The loss of productive labour in every department temperance 
of occupation, is to the extent of at least one day in six ^^ ^^^*' 
throughout the kingdom (as testified by witnesses engaged 
in various manufacturing operations) , by which the wealth 
of the country, created, as it is, chiefly by labour, is 
retarded or suppressed to the extent of one million of 
every six that is produced, to say nothing of the constant 
derangement, imperfection, and destruction in every 
agricultm'al and manufacturing process, occasioned by the 
intemperance and consequent unskilfulness, inattention, 
and neglect of those affected by intoxication, and pro- 
ducing great injury in our domestic and foreign trade," 

From the reports by Drs. Parkes and Sanderson Reports of 
(1871), I cite tlie following :- SdsS" 

" A tin-plate worker in constant work earns 225. a son. 
week. He has a wife, a careful, respectable woman, and 
four children. The husband drank heavily. Sometimes 
he brought home 18s,, sometimes 16s., sometimes 12s. ; 
last week he di-ank it all. If he would bring 22s. a week 
she would be happy as the day is long. This family of 
six persons were living in one back room, paying Is, 6d. 
EL week rent. It was lOJ feet long, 9 feet broad, and 8| 
feet high. The furniture was a bed, table, and two rickety 
chairs. Two of the four children were sick." 

Sir Wilfrid Lawson, M,P,, addressing a meeting of the Hf^^ff"*]'^^ 
United Kingdom Alliance, January 24, 1879, said — Lawson. 

" There were a great many causes working together 
and causing the distress of the country at the present 

E 



242 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

time. Everybody liad his notion about the causes of it. 
He read in the Licensed Victuallers^ Guardian tbe argu- 
ment of the licensed victuallers for it. Their account 
was that the distress was caused by over-trading, over- 
trading was caused by dishonesty and hypocrisy, and 
hypocrisy was caused by teetotalism. He was of the 
contrary opinion. He believed if the bulk of the people 
of this country were teetotalers there would have been 
very little distress at the present time. The Lord Provost, 
during the last few weeks that he had administered relief 
to the distressed in Glasgow, had asked every applicant 
if he was a teetotaler, and found he had not one teetotaler 
come before him for relief. Not considering other 
questions of foolish expenditure, he said the £140,000,000 
which they spent every year in drink was quite sufficient 
to account for the distress. So long as in a country like 
this we went on spending that enormous amount of money, 
it appeared to him impossible that we could have a return 
to the prosperity which we should all like to see. The 
question was, how to put this expenditure down ? It was 
said by some, ' Educate the people,' but he would ask 
how long we had to wait before these educational results 
showed themselves? During the last ten years we must 
have spent upwards of twenty millions of public money 
alone in educating the people, whilst intemperance had 
rather increased than diminished. So that they would 
see that education alone was not the cure. Some people 
said that the people wanted better homes, and that would 
be the remedy. But it was the drinking that made the 
bad home. It was not the bad homes that made the 
drinking. Others there were who held that religion 
' would cure it. He admitted that truth was omnipotent, 
but if they could not bring the truth home to the people 
it was no good." 
Address by On the 16th of January, 1880, Lord Derby, in an 

Lord Derby, ^ddress to the Liverpool Penny Savings Bank Association, 
said — 

" It may seem almost ridiculous to speak of penny 
savings in connection with the growth or decline of national 
wealth : but yet look at the matter that way. I will not 
repeat the old story of what the British liquor bill is — just 
one hundred and forty millions, or £20 a head for every 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 243 

family of five in the Britisli Isles. ISTor ivill I tell you that 
half that sum saved would pay all the taxes of the year ; 
but we all know that, without supposing the nation to 
adopt very ascetic habits, or even to become as strictly 
frugal as France, there is an enormous margin for reason- 
able economy, and we do not, I think, always sufficiently 
appreciate the fact that private frugality will enforce 
public economy. Suppose only one quarter of the sum 
spent in liquor or tobacco to be saved, that implies a 
reduction of ten millions in the revenue, and do you 
suppose any Chancellor of the Exchequer would go to luorJc to 
put on those ten millions again hy taxation ? Not he ; he 
would learn to do without them. It is a peculiarity of this 
country, and I think a happy peculiarity, that the classes 
whose incomes are under £150 a year — the class, that is, 
who live on weekly wages — may relieve themselves almost 
entirely from taxation if they think fit." 

The next is quoted from the Alliance News (March 5, Address by 

1 881 ^ . Mr. Edward 

•■°°-'-/ • Jones, of the 

" In an address to the ' ratepayers of Toxteth Park and Toxteth 
others whom it may concern,' Mr. Edward Jones, of 4, Gwdians. 
Amberley Street, Liverpool, a member of the Toxteth 
Board of Guardians, says, ' The Guardians of Toxteth 
Park, in dealing with applications for relief from week to 
week, were struck by the large number of these cases 
which came from a particular district of the township. A 
return was therefore ordered of the exact number of 
applications for relief during a given period, from that 
portion of the township to the north of Park Street and 
west of Park Road, as compared with the applications 
from the rest of the township. These returns revealed 
the " startling fact " that two-thirds of our pauperism 
came from this district, comprising about one- eighth of 
the area, and only one-fourth of the population ; the exact 
numbers being, from the district marked A, with heavy 
dark tints on the niap, 911 applications for relief ; from 
district B, 542 ; and from district C, 45, in the same period. 
The amount of money spent in liquor in district A may be 
gathered from the fact that over one hundred public- 
houses, or about half the total number of public-houses in 
the township, are maintained and doing a more or less 
flourishing trade within or closely abutting upon this area. 



244 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Estimating the average " weekly takings " of each of these 
public-houses at £20, and assuming that fully one-half of 
the population here are sober, industrious people, who 
spend little or nothing on drink, it may be taken for 
granted that from 10s. to 205. per week from many families 
goes for liquor. How ma.ny struggling, sober, industrious 
families, paying poor rates, are compelled to live on less 
than those receiving parish relief spend in liquor when 
they can get it ? The direct cost to the township of this 
area, in poor rates, is not less than £10,000 per annum, or 
equal to 6d. in the pound of the rates, over and above a 
very liberal allowance for pauperism. To this may be 
added the charge for extra police in these parts, the large 
sums distributed in private charity, and the hundred other 
ways in which the thriftless and the dissolute manage to 
. impose a heavy burden of taxation, voluntary and in- 
voluntary, upon their neighbours. The money cost is not 
the only or the worst part of the business. Murders, 
stabbing, wounding, and other crimes of violence, are of 
frequent occurrence here. The slaughter of innocent 
babes, smothered by their drunken mothers, out-herods 
Herod. The death rate within this area, if published 
separately, would astonish the Health Committee and the 
Town Council of Liverpool, and would stand in striking 
contrast with the rate of mortality in the portions of the 
township without public-houses, which averages 10 in a 
1000 in the rural district. Here it would probably be not 
less than 40 per 1000. Vice and immorality from these 
parts crowd our workhouse hospital, which must soon be 
enlarged, at the cost of the ratepayers, and there is 
displayed a state of things too revolting for description. 
... The applications for parish relief are few and far 
between, and these few from the streets nearest the dark 
area, though a large proportion of the inhabita-nts are of 
the artisan and labouring class. The head constable 
reports that his officers have very little to do in this 
district. No complaint has ever been heard of the absence 
of public-houses in the district, which is two miles long, 
and nearly the same distance wide in its longest measure- 
ment. That the people in the dark area do not wish 
public-houses in their midst is proved by the fact that they 
are rapidly migrating into the bright area, and that 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 245 

whenever memorials in favour of Sunday closing of public- 
houses, and other restrictions, are got up, the people in. 
the dark area are most unanimous in signing them. A 
motion for memorializing the Government in favour of 
a measure for reducing the number of public-houses was 
supported hj seven members of the Toxteth Board of 
Guardians, while eight voted against.' " 

And the same journal ( January 7, 1882) publishes the Addi-essby 
following from the pen of the E;ev. John Kirk, D.D., ?on?Kirk. 
Edinburgh : — 

" This United Kingdom of ours is threatened with 
terrible poverty. The plague which is in various forms 
coming upon us is emphatically national. ... A small 
number of people are becoming enormously rich, while the 
great mass of the community is becom.ing rapidly poor. 
. . . Especially in London scores are dying of literal starva- 
tion for lack of food to eat. ... It is to be expected that 
explanations of this state of things should be given, but it 
is immensely strange that the most obvious of all should 
not even be suffered to be hinted at in the press, in the 
pulpit, or on the platform ! . . . Above one hundred and 
fifty millions of sterling money a year is actually being 
handed over by the masses of the people into the hands 
of a few families for worse than nothing ! The expenditure 
of this money in liquor involves far more than an equal 
loss in efficient labour, and in other ways. The ignorance 
of the multitude is so great, the fascination of the liquor 
is so powerful, the huge swindle is so supported by law 
and government, and the stream of gold is so enormous, 
that it is ostracism to lay it bare to the public eye, and 
yet it is wonderful that it should be possible to be silent on 
the subject, when the great body of the nation is rapidly 
sinking into helpless poverty by this iniquity alone ! Only 
look at the subject for a few moments. Allow this Kquor 
system to be suppressed, and at least three hundred 
millions of sterling money annually will remain in the 
ownership of the mass of the people. Let this sum as 
a capital be employed as it is employed now wherever 
liquor-selling has been suppressed ; let this wealth accumu- 
late as it will, and must do, and what would even seven 
' bad harvests ' do ? The truth is palpable. These harvests 
would not give the people serious concern. They would 



246 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

buy Tip our own farmers' grain, sucli as it is, at a good 
price, and do the same with the American and other, 
grain. All would prosper, perhaps with the solitary, excep- 
tion of those who are now growing rich at the expense of 
their country's threatened ruin. . . . 

" In the meantime, the subject is daily becoming one of 
more terrible importance to the great mass of the people. 
There is a fascination in alcohol so strong that its sale has 
only to be introduced into a neighbourhood to make it 
perfectly sure that it will carry everything before it. You 
may educate and civilize as you can ; you may evangelize 
in the best possible methods ; yet, if you keep up the 
distribution of strong drink among a people, you may rob 
them to any degree, and they will not even complain ! It 
is incredible to what an extent the brewer and distiller 
have men and women at their will — so is it incredible that 
a Government can levy ten shillings of a tax on a liquor 
that does not quite cost one shilling and fourpence. But, 
however incredible, it is simple truth that so it is in reality I 
The very men who take the grain from our best fields, and 
convert it into a fiery liquid, ruinous to soul and body, are 
able to give ten shillings out of every eleven shillings and 
fourpence to what is called 'the State,' and yet to make 
large fortunes out of the remaining sixteenpence ! They 
are able, too, to secure such a sentiment among a large 
• and influential portion of the community as surrounds 
their amazing trafi&c with a sort of halo of respectability ! 
And yet they dare not risk the power of licence for that 
traffic on the vote of the ratepayers ! They dare not risk 
it on the vote even of drunkards ! " 
Mr. William The following from Mr. William's Hoyle's pamphlet, 
Out National Resources and how they are Wasted, appeared 
in the Alliance News (October 27, 1883) : — 

" The policy has been, multiply the temptations to in- 
temperance, and then fine the drunkard or send him to 
prison. If he went on drinking till he or those dependent 
upon him were impoverished, let him be packed off to the 
workhouse. If by their dissipated conduct they lost their 
characters and became vagrants, needing a night's lodging, 
the policy was to make it unpleasant for them, and so 
drive them to barns, brick-kilns, hay -ricks, or anywhere 
else. If, when maddened by drink, or when impelled by 



Hr.yle's 
testimony, 



SOCIAL KESULTS. 247 

hunger, they committed crime, then their names were to 
be put upon the black list, enrolled among the outcasts of 
the nation, and over them was to be set the ever- watchful 
eye of the policeman. And if their children rambled about 
the streets uncared for, they were to be sent off to re- 
formatory schools, where they would be supported and 
trained at the expense of the good citizens of the com- 
munity, and the parents relieved from the burdens and 
expense of their charge, and thus enabled to have more 
money and freedom wherewith to indulge in dissipation 
and hurry on their own ruin. Such has been the policy 
of our statesmen during the last thirty or forty years, and 
to this policy we may attribute three-fourths, if not nine- 
tenths, of the social evils that so grievously affect our land. 

" During the entire period of the recent long depression 
in trade, some very remarkable economic phenomena have 
presented themselves. In the first place, the warehouses 
of the country have been crowded with goods wanting 
customers, and side by side with these there have been 
multitudes of persons in distress and want, needing the 
goods which so overcrowded the warehouses. And then, 
further, there have been the banks with their coffers 
glutted with money seeking to be employed in carrying 
out the purchase and the transfer of stocks in the ware- 
houses to the backs and the homes of the people who were 
in want ; at the same time wages have been comparatively 
high, and the price of food has been low, thus giving a 
large margin of the nation's income as available for invest- 
ment in manufactured goods ; and yet the desired trade 
has not come. How has this arisen ? 

" There can only be one answer given to this question, 
viz., the one given by the Economist newspaper in its 
annual trade review in 1876. The Economist then stated 
that the dulness of trade arose from the fact that from 
some cause or other the means of consumers had become 
lessened; or, in other words, people had become so 
impoverished as to have no money with which to buy the 



" What was it that had impoverished the people ? 
There were several minor causes that had contributed to 
this, chief among which were the bad harvests of the 
country. The loss from this source was variously estimated 



248 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

in different jears at from £20,000,000 to £50,000,000 
per annum ; but tlie main cause of impoverishment was 
this : the money which ought to have gone into the tills 
of the grocer, the draper, the tailor, the furniture dealer, 
etc., went into the till of the publican ; £136,000,000 
yearly thus spent, and another £100,000,000 sacrificed to 
atone for the mischief which the expenditure of the 
£136,000,000 caused, could have no other result than to 
produce depression in trade. There was every element of 
trade prosperity present, except the buying element, but, 
unfortunately, that element, instead of applying itself to 
the purchase of the goods which filled the warehouses, 
wasted its resources at the public-house ; for instance, £4 
per head were spent yearly in drink, and but eight shillings 
on cotton goods, and so people were in poverty and rags, 
and manufacturers could find no market for their goods. 

" The question may arise in the minds of some of my 
audience — What does it matter whether the money be 
spent in drink or in manufactured goods, or in house- 
building, or in improving land, or, indeed, in any way ? 
for, it is said, does not the money circulate in the country 
in one case just as much as in the other ? Let us look at 
this point for a moment. 

"I will suppose the case of one hundred men, each 
earning £2 weekly. On an average the men spend 125. 
per week each in drink, which, unfortunately, for many 
men is not extravagant. At the end of the year these one 
hundred men will have spent £3120. Well, it is said, the 
£3120 is not lost, for it is circulating through the country, 
and, therefore, what does it matter how it is spent ? 

" Suppose, however, that instead of spending the 12^. 
weekly in drink, they put the money into a building club 
and invest it in building houses, the money would build 
twenty houses worth £156 each, and at the end of the 
year the £3120 would be circulating in the country just as 
was the case when spent in drink. In the one case there 
are £3120 circulating, plus nothing; in the other case 
there are £3120 circulating, plus twenty houses added to 
the wealth of the nation. 

" Let us pursue the comparison further. As a result 
of the £3120 spent in drink, there would probably be 
some hundreds of cases of drunkenness ; there would be 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 249 

neglect and loss of work; there woald often be cruelty 
and misery at home; there would be headaches, sickness, 
accidents ; there wonld be neglect of families, pauperism, 
crime, Tagrancy ; there would probably be some addition 
of persons to the unemployed population of the country, 
and maybe also some parts of the families of the hundred 
men would find their way down amongst the lapsed 
masses of society. And there would further be the costs 
and burdens resulting from this condition of things ; and 
the waste of labour and cost of striving to neutralize and 
remedy them. It is a low estimate to assume that from 
these causes £2000 would be lost to society, in addition to 
the £3120 of direct expenditure, or over £5000 in all. 

" Let us follow the other expenditure in its results. 
In the first place, we find some twenty or more men set to 
work to build the houses. These, of course, would earn 
weekly wages, and at the end of the week, themselves or 
their wives would be off to the shops to purchase goods 
for their families ; and besides this there would be the 
absence of the drunkenness and misery which resulted 
when the .money was spent in drink. 

" In one case we have £3120 circulated, plus a further 
indirect loss of some £2000, all of which is abstracted from 
trade, plus resulting misery that is appalling. 

" In the other case we get £3120 circulated, plus 
twenty houses added to the nation's stock of wealth ; plus 
employment found for twenty or more workmen ; plus 
increased trade for the shopkeepers and manufacturers ; 
plus a diminished taxation owing to the absence of the 
drink evil ; plus happiness to the families concerned, 
instead of misery and maybe ruin. 

" In order fully to appreciate the economic influence of 
these two courses of action, we must carry the comparison 
into the second year. The one hundred men who kept off 
the drink start the year with twenty houses, valued at 
£3120, whilst the others have nothing. If these houses 
are let at 4^. pach weekly, they will yield £200 per 
annum, or it is an addition to the men's income of £2 each 
yearly, for which the men do not work. The third year 
it would be more, and the fourth year more again, and so 
wealth would go on increasing, the demand for labour 
would correspondingly grow, and along with both there 



250 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

would be comfort and plenty instead of misery and 
ruin. 

"A moment's reflection will start tlie problem in tbe 
mind of every thoughtful person ; if to redeem an ex- 
penditure of £3120 from drink and transfer it to other 
and legitimate channels, so much of economic and social 
good results, what would have been the sum of the 
economic and social good which would have resulted from 
the redemption of the whole of the drink expenditure of 
£136,000,000 yearly during the last ten years ? I fancy 
that in such a case we should not have been here to-night 
discussing problems, social, economic, etc., for the prob- 
lems would have been solved, and the evils associated 
with them would have disappeared. 

" So far as economic result goes, waste of wealth is as 
hurtful to trade and to the development of material pro- 
gress when it occurs in the spending of money as in the 
production of goods. For example, if a man with an 
income of, say, 26s. weekly, throws 65. of it into the sea, it 
will be clear that he might as well only have an income of 
20s. ; or if he does what is the same thing, squanders it in 
a way that yields him no return of good, he would be 
quite as well off financially and economically if his wages 
were reduced to 2O5. per week ; provided no portion of his 
income were squandered away. 

"But if the man spends his money in a way that not 
only yields him, no return of good, but which, instead of 
good, entails evil upon him, upon his family, and perhaps 
upon the community at large, then by the extent of the 
losses and evils which result from such misspending of 
money, to that extent is the waste of wealth still further 
increased. If we assume that the damage resulting in 
equal in extent, say, to four shillings, it will be clear that 
society will be no better off than if the man's income were 
only sixteen shillings, for the simple reason that, besides 
the five shillings lost in the spending, there is four 
shillings lost in damage done. 

"It is an admitted fact in political economy that labour 
is the chief, if not the only source of value, or, in other 
words, of wealth. As a rule, things are valuable in pro- 
portion to the cost of their production. It will follow, 
therefore, that the labour of one week, if the income there- 



SOCIAL RESULTS, 251 

from be properly expended, will create a demand for the 
labour of the succeeding week. If, therefore, there were 
only the current income fund to fall back upon, this, if 
properly expended, would keep the industrial ball rolling ; 
but when we remember that there is an accumulated 
capital that seeks employment, and when we know that 
money rightly laid out and labour rightly applied are 
constantly reproducing themselves, and adding to the 
capital stock which needs to find employment in purchasing 
labour, or the products of labour, which is the same thing, 
it will be clear that there must be something terribly wrong 
in our economical arrangements and habits, or it would 
not be possible for pauperism and destitution to have a 
place in our midst. 

" But when one-fourth or one-third of the nation's 
income is applied to purposes that yield no return of good, 
but often of harm ; when we spend £136,000,000 yearly in 
drink, and sacrifice £100,000,000 more to make good the 
mischief which the drink does ; and when in many minor 
ways we add to this waste, the total becomes a great one, 
and is a constant draft upon the trading or buying fund of 
the nation, and so it becomes impossible that the industrial 
ball can be kept rolling, inasmuch as the fund needed to 
secure this is so largely wasted ; for we cannot both waste 
it and use it ; and we may try to amend our poor laws, we 
may increase the repressive character of our criminal and 
vagrant laws, we may seek to get better dwellings for the 
working classes, we may labour to find work for our un- 
employed population, or reform our land laws, and improve 
the waste lands of the country — all good and many of them 
very good in their way — but they can never compensate for 
the waste of so much of the nation's income and wealth. 

" If my hearers have been able to follow the facts and 
arguments which have been adduced, they will probably 
have come to the conclusion that the social questions which 
give to our statesmen and philanthropists so much concern 
would have no existence were it not for causes that we 
ourselves set in operation. The question of how to secure 
good trade, ensure fair and steady wages, provide work for 
our unemployed population, remove the inequalities of 
wealth and poverty which exist, how to banish pauperism 
and vagrancy, and largely reduce crime and lunacy, how to 



Bayley. 



252 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

lift Tip from degradation tlie lapsed raasses of our country, 
tow to secure better dwellings for our working classes, 
with other problems, are all bound up with the question of 
the drinking habits of the nation ; remedy this, and all the 
others will practically disappear." 

Letter by Miss Mary Bayley writes in the Daily News (November 

J'i'w''^ 19, 1883)— 

" Those of us who have long watched the steadily in- 
creasing horrors of the homes of our London poor are 
deeply thankful for the prominence you have lately given to 
this subject. Your contributor says with truth that ' no 
single reform, no single line of effort will meet the evil ; ' but 
as regards both the small earnings mentioned, and the 
doubt expressed whether even comfortable incomes would 
avail much as things now are, I should like to call atten- 
tion to the results of increased income in the past, and to 
causes now adding to pressure in the labour market. The 
five years which preceded 1877 were a time of unusual 
prosperity in the way of earning money ; work was com- 
paratively plentiful, and wages high. During those years 
the increase in the consumption of intoxicating drink was 
enormous ; the home consumption of cotton goods went 
down eight per cent. Those who watched the homes of 
the poor during those dreadful years state that their moral 
condition then fell to a lower point than had ever been 
known before. There were happy exceptions not a few ; 
but to the vast majority the large sums earned brought 
rather a diminution than an increase of all that is worthy 
the name of prosperity. Turning now to the subject of 
famine wages and competition for employment, even here 
the door of prosperity is bolted and barred, not by want 
of resources, but by our vices. When I return from 
homes whose belongings, all put together, would once ha^e 
failed to realize half a crown, and see that, though only 
receiving the same wages as before, the reclaimed occupants 
have become customers to the ironmonger, cabinet-maker, 
crockery shop, linendraper, etc., I am at a loss to conceive 
how great would be the natural increase in demand for 
labour of all kinds if this change should become general. 
And when reading the heartrending statistics of ill-paid 
labour done by women, let us not forget that there are 
tens of thousands of married women crowding up the 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 258 

labour market wlio ouglit never to be tbere at all. I have 
persuaded very many women to give up all paid labour, 
and to devote themselves entirely to their families. I can 
recall no instance where this change was not advantageous, 
even pecuniarily, for the waste and destruction caused by 
neglected children are indescribable. Where the wife has 
to earn money the children are usually in rags. Just a 
few indispensable articles of clothing are purchased ready- 
made at a slop-shop, at a price so low one wonders how 
anything can have been paid for making up. The mother 
at home can encourage honest trade by buying decent 
material which she makes up herself. But how is all this 
possible while thousands upon thousands of pounds arc 
swept into publicans' tills every Saturday and Sunday 
night ? The sums that are still forthcoming to procure 
intoxicating drink appear to me to disprove your contribu- 
tor's statement that low wages are the main root of our 
present distress. They are a fruit, though bearing seed, 
it is true, and thus continually dropping fresh roots." 

In his papers on " How the Poor live," published during George R. 
the summer of 1883 in The Pictorial World, Mr. George H. f^^'wlhe 

Sims says Poor live." 

" The gin palaces flourish in the slums, and fortunes 
are made out of men and women who seldom know where 
to-morrow's meal is coming from. ... A copper or two 
often obtained by pawning the last rag that covers the 
shivering children on the bare floor at home, will buy 
enough vitriol madness to send a woman home so besotted 
that the wretchedness, the anguish, the degradation that 
await her there have lost their grip. ... If I were asked to 
say offhand what was the greatest curse of the poor, and 
what was the greatest blessing, I think my answer to the 
first query would be the public-house, and to the second, 
the hospital." 

And this from the Daily News (November 20, 1883) : — Thetesti- 
" Speaking on Sunday night at the Grreat Central Hall, Srca^ue, 
Shoreditch, which is within a stone's throw of some of the m.p. 
London ' slums,' Mr. Caine, M.P., said that the question of 
housing the London poor was one, he thought, in which 
Parliament could help, not by building houses at the cost 
of the State, but in removing as far as possible the causes 
which resulted in the evils now being so widely discussed. 



254^ 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Canon 
Farrar's 
sermon on 
drink in 
Westminster 
Abbey, Nov. 
19, 1883. 



George E,. 
Sims on 
" Horrible 
London." 



Drink made tlie poor live wliere tliey did. Tales of poverty 
had been told — how people had to make match-boxes at 
2^d. per gross, how women had to work fourteen or jB.fteen 
hours per day at shirt work ere they could earn a shilling, 
how at waistcoat-making people could not get a living. 
Why was it ? Because trade was depressed, was the 
answer. Why was trade depressed ? Because those who 
wanted to buy could not buy. Who were those who 
wanted to buy and could not ? People who took their 
money to the public-house instead of laying the same out in 
necessaries. If London next day became teetotal, £200,000 
per week would be available. Two hundred thousand 
families might have a pound per week each added to their 
incomes." 

On the occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of the 
Church of England Temperance Society, November 19, 
1883, a noble sermon on the drink evil was preached in 
Westminster Abbey by Canon Farrar. 

" We have heard much in these days," said he, " of 
' Horrible London,' and of the bitter cry of its abject. 
What makes these slums so horrible ? I answer with 
certainty, and with the confidence of one who hnows — drink ! 
What is the remedy ? I tell you every remedy you attempt 
will be a miserable failure. I tell the nation with convic- 
tion founded on experience that there will he no remedy till 
you save these outcasts from the temptation of drink. Leave 
the drink, and you might build them palaces in vain ; 
leave the drink, and before the year is over your palaces 
would be reeking with dirt and squalor, with infamy and 
crime." * 

Says Mr. Sims, in his paper on " Horrible London " in 
the Daily News (November 23, 1883)— 

"It is not fair to prove by facts and statistics the evil 
of over-population and the evil of low wages, and to shrink 
from revealing the evil of drink. That has to be removed 
as well as the others, and must be taken into account. 
... It is only when one probes this wound that one finds 
how deep it is. Much as I have seen of the drink evil, it 
was not until I came to study one special district, with a 
view of ascertaining how far the charge of drunkenness 
could be maintained against the poor as a body, that I had 
* Church of England Temperance Chronicle, Nov. 24, 1883. 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 255 

any idea of the terrible extent to wMcli this cause of 
poverty prevails. 

" Come to a common lodging-house, and see what class 
of people fill the beds at fourpence a night. Poor 
labourers ? Tes. Loafers and criminals ? Yes. But 
hundreds of men who have once been in first-class posi- 
tions, and who have had every chance of doing well, are 
to be found there also. 

" For my purpose I will merely take the cases which 
have drifted to the slum lodging-house through drink. . 

" The following have all passed recently through one 
common lodging-hou.se in one of the most notorious slums 
of London : — 

" A paymaster of the Eoyal lN"avy, 

" Two men who had been college chums at Cambridge, 
and met accidentally here one night, both in the last stage 
"of poverty. One had kept a pack of hounds, and succeeded 
to a large fortune. 

" A physician's son, himself a doctor, when lodging 
here sold fusees on the Strand. 

"A clergyman who had taken high honours. Last 
seen in the Borough, drunk, followed by jeering boys. 

" A commercial traveller and superintendent of a 
Sunday school. 

" A member of the Stock Exchange — found to be 
suffering from delirium tremens — removed to work- 
house. 

" The brother of a clergyman and scholar of European 
repute died eventually in this slum. Friends had ex- 
hausted every effort to reclaim him. Left wife and three 
beautiful children living in a miserable den in the neigh- 
bourhood. Wife drinking herself to death. Children 
rescued by friends and provided for. 

" Brother of a vicar of a large London parish — died in 
the slum. 

" These are all cases which have passed through one 
common lodging-house. What would the others show 
had we the same opportunity of knowing their customers ? 
These people have all been forced back on a rookery 
through drink — sober, they need never have sunk so low 
as that." 

The following is quoted from the " Dustman's speech " The "Dust- 



256 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



man s 
speech " in 
Exeter Hall 
(Nov. 21, 
1883). 



The con- 
dition of 
drunkards' 
children. 



at the Working-men's Meeting, November 21, 1883, in 
Exeter Hall :— 

"I say again, as a working man, tliat we have had 
too much talk about a working man being robbed of 
his liberty if he gives up intoxicating drink : that is 
exactly when he gets his liberty. I say, Grod bless the 
publicans and the distillers, and may they soon lose the 
situation that they now have, for life to them is death to 
us. I will show them why. If they lost their situations, 
there would be more custom for other shopkeepers, and 
the surroundings of neighbourhoods would be improved. 
If there is anything that is interfering with the liberty 
of the people at the present day, it is the consumption of 
intoxicating drink." 

As to the children of drunkards, the Alliance News 
(September 27, 1879) says— 

" Attention has of late been turned by correspondents 
of Manchester to the poor children who are forced to pick 
up a living in the streets at most untimely hours. The 
writer of a letter in the Manchester Guardian, for example, 
recounts how within half an hour of midnight he was 
accosted by a lad of about eight years of age, who desired 
him to buy a box of matches. The lad was crying bitterly, 
and followed the writer a long way, beseeching him to 
give him a penny for the box. Having been cheated 
several times by children affecting great distress, the 
writer ordered him rather gruffly to begone ; and he slunk 
away, sobbing in a manner which went to the very heart. 
Conscience compelled the hearer to turn back and question 
the boy. He replied through his tears that he dared not 
go home, because his mother would ' leather ' him, as he 
had had bad luck that day. This precious mother, it 
seems, had given him three-halfpence in the morning, and 
told him that he must not return until he had earned 
sevenpence halfpenny, or else he would ' catch it.' He 
invested one penny of this capital in two halfpenny boxes 
of matches, which he sold in the course of the day for 
one penny each. Then he bought another two, but had 
only managed to dispose of one of them, leaving him at 
that late hour with only twopence halfpenny and a box of 
matches. His little brother had gone home before him, 
and he could not help crying, as his mother always 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 257 

' leathered ' him if lie did not come home with the money 
in time. The lad was covered with rags and tatters from 
head to foot, bnt he had an intelligent face, and spoke 
both correctly and modestly. After rewarding him for his 
information, the writer turned homeward, meditating on the 
horrible fact that, with all our civilization, there should 
exist parents who enslave their children, and deliberately 
make their lives a blight to them and a curse to society. 

" Subsequent revelations and reports of other letter 
writers have shown beyond all doubt that children thus 
abused always have parents who spend most of their 
substance in drink. The child ragged and ill-used is ever 
the drunkard's child. Education, clothing, food, home 
care, all are swallowed down with the drink, and the poor 
child is sent out with curses and threats to force sales on 
a compassionate public, instead of being folded at home in 
the arms of parental love. The philanthropists, whose 
feelings are shocked on the discovery of so much cruelty, 
at once set to work to devise some petty ameliorations and 
palliatives. The children must, forsooth, be taken from 
their parents, and thrust into industrial schools. Or there 
must be a law passed forbidding children's sale of matches 
or papers in the streets after a certain hour in the evening. 
All the while the truth is overlooked, that so sure as 
the existing cases of parental cruelty and of children's 
nocturnal street- cries are dealt with, a new crop of 
children, equally wretched, and equally needing deliver- 
ance from their parents, will arise to point the finger of 
scorn at the labours of the philanthropist. 

"When a tree is evil, and brings forth evil fruit in 
ceaseless profusion, they do nothing who confine their 
efforts to the fruit. Clear away one crop, another still 
succeeds; and so it will be till Philanthropy, tired out, 
folds her hands and sits down in sheer despair. But to 
kill the root is to cut off the fruit ; and they who seek to 
stop the sad fruit of drunken cruelty to children must go 
down under the cruelty, which is the fruit, to the drunken- 
ness, which is the stem of the tree, and again below that 
to the liquor traffic, which is the root. Until this is done 
nothing is done. The bitter crop removed, renews itself. 
The helHsh bough is torn away from the tree for a 
moment; but uno avulso, non deficit alter.'' 

S 



258 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Comparison 
between the 
revenue re- 
turns from 
drink in 
prosperous 
and un- 
prosperous 
years. 



Address by 

Cardinal 

Manning. 



Important 
evidence of 
Charles 



Perliaps the best and most conclusive proof that drink 
causes poverty, infinitely more than poverty causes drink, 
is seen by a comparison of the revenue returns in prosperous 
and unprosperous years. 

In the measure that England is prosperous the drink 
bill increases; on the other hand, in the measure that 
trade and wages are depressed and the country poorer 
thereby, the drink bill diminishes ; but if poverty were the 
cause of drink, it would seem as if this would be exactly 
reversed, i.e., in years of prosperity there should be less 
intemperance, and vice versa. 

" Can it be for a moment imagined that this great 
commercial country, so wise and so skilful in all finance, 
in all investments, and with its eyes open, can go on year 
by year wasting a hundred and forty millions of money in 
the production of intoxicating drink, which when drunk is 
gone ? Can there be a more complete waste ? Expend it 
in the drainage of England and the culture of the land, 
and there would be bread for the hungry mouths of the 
people. Expend it in manufacture of cloth, and there 
would be no man and no child without a coat upon his 
back. Expend it in the building of houses fit for human 
habitation, and there would not be a working man and 
his family without a roof over his head. We talk of 
profitable investments, and then waste a hundred and 
thirty millions in the most unprofitable investment that 
can be conceived by the imagination of man. Nay, I will 
go further. It is not only waste. It has a harvest. It 
is a great sowing broadcast. And what springs from the 
furrow? Deaths; mortality in every form; disease of 
every kind ; crime of every dye ; madness of every intensity ; 
misery beyond the imagination of man; sin, which it sur- 
passes the imagination to conceive." * 

That poverty, even when honourable and averse to 
drink, can be coerced by its dire necessities into filling 
the publican's till is seen in the digest of the Parliamentary 
evidence on Drunkenness in 1834. 

" (Charles Saunders called in and examined.) 

" 333. What is your occupation ? — Coal-whipper. 

* From an address on temperance delivered at Newcastle-on- 
Tyne, by Cardinal Manning, and reported in the Alliance News, Sep- 
tember 9, 1882. 



SOCIAL EESULTS 259 

" 334. Have tlie goodness to state to the committee Saunders 
tlie manner in whicli coal-wtiippers are engaged a,nd paid. parJia-^^^ 
— I have been in the habit of obtaining a living by coal- mentary 
w^hipping for the last ten years. When I want employ- onXinkTn 
ment (me and the likes of me, of course) I have to go to i834. 
the publican to get a job, to ask him for a job ; and he 
tells me to go and sit down and he will give me an answer 
by-and-by. I go and sit down, and if I have twopence in 
my pocket, of- course I am obliged to spend it, with a view 
of getting a job; and probably, wben two or three hours 
have elapsed, by that time there is about fifty or sixty 
people come on the same errand to the same person, for a 
job. He keeps us three or four hours there ; and then he 
comes out, and he looks round among us, and he knows 
those well that can drink the most, and those are the 
people that obtain employment first. Those that cannot 
drink a great deal, and think more of their family than 
others do, cannot obtain any employment ; those that 
drink the most get the most employment. When the men 
are made up for the ship, we go to work the next day 
morning; but we have to take what the publican calls 
the allowance, such as a quartern of rum or three half- 
quarterns, or a pot of beer ; then they have to take a pot 
of beer of£ in a bottle on board — what he calls beer, but not 
fit for a man to drink generally speaking ; what I call 
jpoison. I have actually teemed it overboard myself, before 
I could drink it; I could not drink it, although I have 
been sweating and as thirsty as a man could be, and have 
put it overboard, and gone and dipped my bottle in a 
bucket of water. 

" 337. In the after part of the day, when your work 
was over, where did you go then ? — Then when we had 
done our day's work we came on shore, and we had to go 
into the house again ; and perhaps we might want a 
shilling or two to get our families a little support. The 
landlord would tell us to go and sit down in the taproom, 
and he would give us some by-and-by, and he would keep 
us there till nine or ten at night ; first we would go for 
a pint or a jpot, to see whether he was getting ready, for 
we dared not go empty handed, without a pot or a pint, 
or to call for something by way of excuse. After keeping 
us there until nine or ten at night, then he would give us 
half a crown or three shillings. 



260 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Report of 
the special 
sanitaryj 
commis- 
sioner of the 
Lancet in 
1872. 



" 340. What would have happened if you had refused 
to spend money in drink ? — Then we could have no employ- 
ment ; and, moreover, if you had had what you thought 
was requisite, if he did not think it was sufficient, he 
would add more than what you had actually contracted 
for ; and if you refused to pay this, and said, ' I have not 
had so much, I won't pay it ' — ' Oh, won't you ? If you 
do not, here is your money what you say it is ; go out and 
never come in here again.' 

" 341. Have you known anybody refused employment 
because they would not contribute to the publican's demand 
for drink ? — Yes ; I could find fifty. 

" 342. Who have lost their employment because they 
would not drink so much as the publican wished ? — Yes, 
I could. 

" 343. Could you not engage yourself to the captain of 
the ship without going to the publican ? — No ; for the 
publicans are some of them shipowners, and they are all 
intermixed through the trade by one thing and another, 
so that the captain or owner of the ship gives the favour 
to the publican to employ the whippers." 

A practical illustration of the degradation brought about 
by drink and poverty combined is furnished in the report 
of the special sanitary commissioner of the Lancet, made in 
1872, in which the social condition of the poor at Liverpool 
is thus described : — * 

" There is here a form of poverty which can neither be 
coaxed nor coerced ; fines are useless, imprisonment vain. 
There are upwards of six thousand cellars occupied by 
permission of tbe law, where at night drunkenness and 
dirt, wretchedness and rags beggar description. The air 
is redolent with broken sewers and human ordure ; it is 
polluted with odours of filthy persons, foul rags, and 
stinking fish. The very walls exhale a stench of vermin 
and contagion. In not one room in ten is there a bed- 
stead, in not one a wholesome bed. The inmates lie 
upon the floor, from which they are separated by a bit of 
straw or a bundle of dirty rags. Mothers and sons, 
fathers and daughters, brothers and sisters, relations and 
strangers of both sexes, lie indiscriminately together, many 

* Since this date the sanitary condition of Liverpool slums has 
been much improved. 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 261 

of tliem all but naked, locked in each others' arms for 
warmth.." 

In this fearful picture we see a condition — probably The meaning 
chiefly due to intemperance, certainly greatly intensified and ^f suS^^"^* 
rendered hopeless by it — in which all distinctions by which degradation. 
we know one another as worthy of life, hope, and love have 
been destroyed. Six thousand such cellars in one city ! 

Why, then, in that one city alone there must be physical 
and moral poison enough to infect the whole social structure 
of the world. But when we remember that Liverpool is 
not alone, that there is no city without some such compost- 
heap of vice, and remember, too, that unity of the race 
which asserts itself, in vice as well as in virtue, over all 
the most cleverly contrived and impregnable barriers of 
class and caste, so that there is a mutual trickling and 
percolating interchange of life-essence through the whole 
stratification we call society ; then we begin to see some- 
thing of the tremendous danger and horror of the evil 
that has been suffered to root itself with the life-roots of 
the race. 

To illustrate in part what I mean by saying that the 
unity of the race overcomes the barriers of caste and class, 
and asserts itself in vice as in virtue, I may point to the 
invincible levelling power of the sexual passion — the power 
given to us to inspire us to the highest plane of moral 
being possible to this life, but by which we can, if we will, 
sound the lowest abysses. It is the one touch of nature 
making the whole world kin ; making it kin on the pure 
and lofty plane of pure and perfect home-life where sons 
and daughters grow up in the strengthening light of the 
unselfish love which first united the husband and wife, 
and now binds and inspires them in fatherhood and 
motherhood ; making it kin in the populous world of the 
merely pleasure-seeking ; and again making it kin in 
those depths where it has sunk into the low and ravenous 
sensual instinct of prey. 

Wherever man exists, this one power, dominating for 
good or ill, is our common inheritance and keeps oblite- 
rating all external distinctions, drawing the race together, 
and cementing life-relations in the present, and for 
posterity, despite the strongest contrast and most insur- 
mountable obstacles. 



262 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



"Why 
should Lon- 
don wait ? " 
Daily 
Telegraph, 
Oct. 25, 1883. 



Out of some of those six thousand cellars in Liverpool 
— nests of utmost vice and degradation as they are — some 
young girl may emerge, who, in spite of rags and dirt, and 
every bad inheritance, may be fair, may have both, wit and 
pretty looks enough to catch the fancy of some gentleman's 
son ; and if drink has done its usual work of strangling 
the moral life within him as inheritance and environments 
have done it for her — the worst wrong that may follow 
does follow, and if a child is born and lives, it may by an 
advance in mental endowment take its vile moral heritage 
where yet wider nemesis will be wrought. 

For if those who dwell always in the safety and refine- 
ment of real homes, imagine that the slums and dens of 
vice are far from them and theirs — that there can be 
nothing in common between them, I must in conscience 
hint that they may be making the dangerous mistake of 
under-estimating the damning power of alcohol to obliterate 
just those refined distinctions in which they trust. 

Alcohol can and does lead the husbands, fathers, brothers, 
and sons of just such prosperous homes into just such pits 
of infamy. They do not go at once and with their eyes 
open, but step by step, as surely as the drinking habit is 
once formed. For alcohol is not satisfied with making men 
act weakly and wrongly ; it will have them gravitate to 
worse and worse, and is cunning to devise always some 
lower and more blasting shame. It develops also that 
other cunning of madness, quickness and watchful subtlety 
to veil its ravages and deceive the solicitude of loving ones. 
And the result is not only that besides the family we know 
of, sheltered under the same roof with us, there are half- 
brothers and half-sisters whom we never know, homeless 
wanderers in friendless giiilt and shame, or tenants of early 
graves that cry louder than Abel's blood ; but the evil 
comes home and the good wife and mother is made to un- 
consciously impart the secret poison to her latest born. 

Under the heading, " Why should London wait ? " the 
Daily Telegraph (October 25, 1883) says, " It is, however, be- 
ginning to be known what cruel sights and scenes the wealth 
and magnificence of London conceal. Men, women, and 
children by hundreds of thousands exist among us in a 
condition which savages would scorn and beasts refuse to 
bear. Without light, air, fresh water, or any of the veriest 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 263 

necessities of human life, thej are forced to congregate in 
places where not only morality but the merest decency 
becomes impossible. A majority among them are indus- 
trious and patient people, eager to work while they can ; 
for thieves, prostitutes, tramps, and beggars are, most of 
them, better lodged than the victims of the vestry and the 
caucus whose cause is now at stake. Into rotten and reek- 
ing tenements they are driven helplessly by the process 
which rebuilds the capital without making rightful provi- 
sion for its weakest citizens, and their cry is drowned and 
their sorrows overwhelmed in the ocean of existence which 
surges around them. 'Every room,' says an explorer, 'in 
these rotten and reeking tenements houses a family, often 
two. In one cellar a sanitary inspector reports finding a 
father, mother, three children, and four pigs ! In a room 
a missionary discovered a man ill with small-pox, his wife 
just recovering fromher eighth confinement, and the children 
running about half-naked and covered with dirt. Here are 
seven people living in one underground kitchen, and a 
little dead child lying in the same chamber. Elsewhere is 
a poor widow, her three children, and a child who had been 
dead thirteen days. Her husband, who was a cabman, had 
shortly before committed suicide. Here lives a widow and 
her six children, including one daughter of twenty-nine, 
one of twenty-one, and a son of twenty-seven. Another 
apartment contains father, mother, and six children, two of 
whom are ill with scarlet fever. In another nine brothers and 
sisters, from twenty-nine years downwards, live, eat, and 
sleep together. Here is a mother who turns her children 
into the street in the early evening because she lets her 
room for immoral purposes until long after midnight, when 
the poor little wretches creep back again, if they have not 
found some miserable shelter elsewhere.' Where there are 
beds they are simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings, or straw. 
Crime also, as a matter of course, spreads like a fungus in 
decaying timber, where a child must make fifty-six gross 
of match-boxes a day to earn the ten shillings a week which 
thieving will easily bring him. There are women who 
work at the needle seventeen hours per diem for the pay 
of one shilling ! In St. George's-in-the-East large numbers 
of children toil with their tiny fingers all day making sacks 
at a farthing apiece ! One poor woman was found, con- 



264 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

siimptive and emaciated, witli a drunken husband and five 
starving children ' eating a few green peas.' In a room at 
Wycli Street, * on the third floor, over a marine store 
dealer's, there was, a short time ago, an inquest as to the 
death of a little babj. A man, his wife, and three children 
were living in that room. The infant was the second child, 
who had died, poisoned by the foul atmosphere ; and this 
dead baby was cut open in the one room where its parents 
and brothers and sisters lived, ate, and slept, because the 
parish had no mortuary and no room in which post- 
mortems could be performed ! ' In such abodes what room is 
there for honesty, or faith, or hope ? Virtue herself departs, 
ashamed, hopeless, and silent, fr-om ' homes ' where she has 
nothing to offer, nothing to promise ; where Vice itself is 
so miserable that it is more to be pitied than reproached. 

" These are but slight and simple examples of the state 
of things prevalent in the capital of Great Britain ; widely, 
notoriously, terribly prevalent ; of cases to be paralleled by 
thousands and scores of thousands behind the splendid 
streets and wealthy squares of London." 
The Bitter From the little pamphlet entitled The Bitter Cry of 

cast^L<mdon ^^^^^^^ London, * I quote the following (showing the close 
(1883). relation between drink, poverty, and shame) : — " The low 

parts of London are the sink into which the filthy and 
abominable from all parts of the country seem to flow. 
Entire courts are filled with thieves, prostitutes, and libe- 
rated convicts. The misery and sin caused by drink in 
these districts have often been told, but these horrors can 
never be set forth either by pen or artist's pencil. In the 
district of Euston Road is one public-house to every hundred 
people, counting men, women, and children. Children who 
can scarcely walk are taught to steal, and mercilessly beaten 
if they come back from their daily expeditions without 
money or money's worth. Many of them are taken by the 
hand or carried in the arms to the gin-palace, and not 
seldom may you see mothers urging and compelling their 
tender infants to drink the fiery liquid. Lounging at the 
doors, and lolling out of windows, and prowling about 
street corners were pointed out several well-known members 
of the notorious band of ' Forty Thieves,' who, often in 
conspiracy with abandoned women, go out after dark to 

* Issued by the Committee of the London Congregational Union. 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 265 

rob people in Oxford Street, Regent Street, and other 
thoroughfares. These particulars indicate but faintly the 
moral influences from which the dwellers in these squalid 
regions have no escape, and by which is bred ' infancy that 
knows no innocence, youth without modesty or shame, 
maturity that is mature in nothing but suffering and 
guilt, blasted old age that is a scandal on the name we 
bear.' " 

§ 65. The mortality from drink has been a much- disputed Mortality 
question, and the many public utterances by men accounted 
both competent and veracious have for some reason re- 
ceived but slight attention from the public ; and it is 
perhaps not well known that the average figures now 
generally accepted as approximately true have been com- 
puted as long ago as in 1839. In the Rev. B. Parsons' statement by 
Anti-Bacchus (1839) I find the following : — " At an inquest ^^™ j^ 
held June, 1839, on a person who had died from the effects i839. 
of intemperance, Mr. Wakley, coroner, made these remarks : 
' I think intoxication likely to be the cause of one-half the 
inquests that are held.' Mr. Bell, the clerk of the inquests, 
observed ' that the proportion of deaths so occasioned 
were supposed to be three out of five.' 'Then,' said Mr. 
"Wakley, ' there are annually 1500 inquests in the Western 
Division of Middlesex, and, according to that ratio, nine 
hundred of the deaths are produced by hard drinking.' On 
another occasion Mr. Wakley said, ' Gin may be thought 
the best friend I have ; it causes me to hold annually one 
thousand inquests more than I should otherwise hold. 
Besides these, I have reason to believe that from ten to 
fifteen thousand persons in this metropolis die annually 
from the effects of gin-drinking, npon whom no inquests 
are held.' These remarks appeared in most of the public 
papers of the time, and are the more valuable because Mr. 
Wakley, not long before he became coroner, spoke in the 
House of Commons rather sneeringly of teetotalers ; the 
observations made above were therefore extorted fi^om him 
by the scenes he had witnessed." 

In his Mortality of Intemperance (London, 1879) Dr. Testimony 
Kerr says, " When, a few years ago, I instituted an manKS-n" 
inquiry into the causes contributing to the mortality in the 
practice of several medical friends, it was with the avowed 
object of demonstrating and exposing the utter falsity of 



^QQ THE FOUNDATION" OF DEATH. 

the perpetual teetotal assertion, that 60,000 drunkards died 
every year in the United Kingdom. 

" I had not long pursued this line of inquiry before it 
was made clear to me that there was little, if any, exagge- 
ration in these temperance statistics ; and when asked to 
present the final results of my investigation to the last 
Social Science Congress, I was compelled to admit that at 
least 120,000 of our population annually lost their lives 
through alcoholic excess — 40,500 dying from their own in- 
temperance, and 79,500 from accident, violence, poverty, or 
disease arising from the intemperance of others." 

The Harveian Society Report concludes that fourteen per 
cent, of the mortality among adults is due to alcohol; i.e., 
about 39,000 in England and Wales, or 52,000 in Great 
Britain ; thus the Harveian computation exceeds Dr. 
Kerr's by 11,500. 

On the occasion of the Jubilee of the British Medical 
Association (held at Worcester, August, 1882), Dr. Kerr 
reiterated his statements, and no one disputed their 
accuracy : it was even admitted that he was within the 
truth. 
Sir Wm. Gull In a June number of the Echo (1883) appeared a 
infanticide? powerful plea for the protection of infants, entitled Alco- 
holic Infanticide. It stated that Sir W. Gull considered 
alcohol as the " most destructive agent among the causes of 
infant mortality," and cited the evidence of the coroners 
concerning the fearfully frequent suffocation of helpless 
little ones under the heavy bodies of their torpidly drunk 
mothers — a kind of accident known as ' overlaying ; ' and 
alluded to the weekly records of child-murder committed, 
not from stupidity, but in the direct violence of the drink- 
frenzy, by braining the babe or casting it in the fire." The 
Echo quoted Darwin, and Drs. Edis, Bichardson, Bree, 
and Elam, as testifying to great infant mortality from 
drink, and to the evil hereditary results for those who 
survived. 

The Lancet of about the same date suggested a frightful 
significance for the overlaying mortality, to the effect that 
it was by no means always accidental. 

Mortality An appalling and pathetic feature in tie drink mortality 

deaierl^^*^"^'^ Hst, and a most conclusive proof that drink is a foundation 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 267 

of death, is furnislied by the statistics of death among the 
liquor dealers themselves. 

Dr. Kerr, in the essay just quoted from, says, "The Estimate of 
mortality of publicans is so serious that the Registrar- ^' ^"' 
General's reports show that 138 die for every 100 em- 
ployed in 70 leading occupations ; and in his last annual 
report he draws attention to the remarkable increase in the 
rate of mortality among grocers at every group of ages 
since they have begun to retail spirits." 

Mr. David Lewis, ex-magistrate of the city of Edin- statement 
burgh, in his Drink Problem and its Solution (1881), says cavidLewis. 
— " So frequent have premature deaths become among 
publicans, that one of the most wealthy and popular life 
assurance associations in the kingdom (the Scottish 
Widows' Fund) has issued a circular to all its agents in- 
structing them that in future the life of no publican can 
be insured upon any terms whatever. This example, we 
observe, is being followed by several other associations in 
this country and America." 

And the General Assurance Office, on the 18th of Notice issued 
February, 1881, issued a notice, which stated — " That in Assurance 
consequence of the excessive mortality experienced in the O^^e in 
case of innkeepers whose lives have been assured with 
the company, it is hereby notified that from this date 
the directors will not undertake these risks on any 
terms." 

Concerning the mortality among pubhc-house keepers. Statement 
Dr. Edmunds, in his Use of AlcoJiol as a Medicine (1867), Edmunds. 



" You will find that thirty per thousand of those die 
every year where the normal average of other men is fifteen 
— that is, where one workman dies two publicans die. Can 
we account for that in any way ? What should we expect 
if we looked into these facts ? The publican is better 
clothed than the working man ; he is better housed and 
better fed, and less exposed to casualty and accident which 
occur to men in laborious, mechanical, and other trades ; 
and therefore we should expect that the publican would 
live longer than the ordinary working man. And so he 
would, if it were not for this one fact which comes in — he 
is mixed up with alcoholic liquors ; he is not, as a rule, a 
drunkard, but he takes that which damages his stomach. 



268 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



a good many times a day, out of com.plim.ent to some friend 
wlio asks him to take a drink ! " 



Relative 
longevity of 
drinkers and 
abstainers, as 
furnished by 
the United 
Kingdom 
Temperance 
and General 
Provident 
Institution 
for Mutual 
Life 
Insurance. 



As to tlie relative liealtMulness of temperance or drink 
the tables yearly made up by the United Kingdom Temper- 
ance and General Provident Institution for Mutual Life 
Insurance (established 1840) afford conclusive practical 
evidence. The secretary of this institution, Mr. Thomas 
Cash, kindly furnished me with the following condensed 
but lucid statement : — 



1866-70 (five years) 
1871-75 (five years) 
1876-80 (five years) 
1881-82 (two years) 



Total (17 years) 



Temperance Section. 


General 


Section. 


Expected 
Claims. 


Actual. 


Expected 
Claims. 


Actual. 


549 
723 
933 
439 


411 ... 
511 .... 
651 ... 

288 ... 


1008 

... 1268 

... 1485 

647 


944 
1330 
1480 

585 


2644 


1861 ... 


... 4408 


4339 



statement of 
W. B. Robin- 
son, Chief 
Constructor, 
E.N. 



It will be seen from this that the claims in the tem- 
perance section are only a little over seventy per cent, of 
the expectancy, while in the general section they are but 
slightly below the expectancy. 

W. B. Robinson, Chief Constructor, R.N^., in a paper 
on The Value of Life being increased hy taking no 
Intoxicating Drinks, read before the Economic Section of 
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
September 22, 1883, said that " The Sceptre Life Associa- 
tion states that during ' the eighteen years of our history 
ending December 31, 1882, we had 116 deaths in our 
temperance section, against 270 expected deaths,' and in 
' this year, 1883, the same disproportion prevails, as we 
have had fifty-one deaths, and only seven of them on the 
lives of abstainers, whereas to be equal with non- abstainers 
there should have been nineteen.' 

" In the Emperor Life Assurance Office they have a 
temperance branch, and they assure lives at a ' less rate 
than moderate drinkers, thus giving them an immediate 
bonus of from £3 to £7, according to age, on each £100 
assurance.' 

" In some accidental offices the assumed superior lives 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 269 

of abstainers is recognized bj a charge of 20 per cent, less 
to teetotal than to moderate drinkers." * 

§ 66. Scblegel said, when this centnrj was in its dawn — 
" Drinking is the principal cause of insanity and suicide in schiegei on 
England, Germany, and Russia, of licentiousness and drink as a 

=>', t'' -I p ^ • j_ • c( -jj cause of in- 

gamblmg m France, and ot bigotry m fepam. sanity and 

Dr. F. Ganghofner, of Prague, in his address on the ^^i^^i^^- 
Influence of Alcohol on Man (Prague, 1880), says, "It is Dr. Gang- 
estimated that in the asylums of America, England, and gg^^^'^^^ ^^ 
Holland, the total number insane from drink ranges from alcoholic 
15 to 20 per cent., and from 20 to 28 per cent, in the JSTrnTrica, 
asylums of France." England, and 

In the Journal of Mental Science (April, 1869), Dr. ^''^^^'''^• 
Lockhart-Robertson computes for England and Germany, Dr. Lock- 
in 1844, one lunatic to every 808 inhabitants, and in 1868 soJ^^om-"*' 
one lunatic for every 432 inhabitants. putation for 

The third report on intemperance before the Select Germaliy^" 
Coinmittee of the House of Commons shows, from 1865 to House of 
1875, an increase in population of 13 per cent., in lunacy Rep^S 
of 67 per cent., and in drunkenness of 130 per cent. from ises 

Mr. Hojle states that " The number of lunatics in 
asylums and workhouses in the United Kingdom will be Mr. Hoyieon 
slightly over 100,000, besides many not in asylums. In fi^anity^in 
England and Wales, in the year 1860, there were 38,038, England and 
but in 1880 they had increased to 71,191, being nearly 
double, although the population had only increased 28 per 
cent." 

And I may add that, according to the last report of the 
Commissioners of Lunacy, "the total number of lunatics. Last report 
idiots, and persons of unsound mind, registered as being ^iggfonersof 
insane, in England and Wales, on the 1st of January, 1883, Lunacy, 
was 76,765 ! " 

Dr. Edgar Shepherd, Medical Superintendent of Colney 
Hatch Lunatic Asylum, stated a few years ago publicly that Dr. Shep- 
he believed that 40 per cent, of the insanity in Great ^^^^j.^ ®*^*^' 
Britain was the result of drink. f In his annual report for 

* For farther information on this most practical point, see The 
Comparative Death-Rate of Total Abstainers and Moderate Drinkers 
by Dr. C. R. Drysdale, in Med. Temp. Journal (Jan., 1884), The Vital 
Statistics of Total Abstinence, by the Rev. Dawson Bnrns (March, 
1884). 

t Med. Chirurgical Journal, 1876. 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

1877, Dr. Sheplierd repeated tMs statement in these 
words : — " A careful analysis of tlie year's admissions 
clearly established a percentage of more than 28 as due to 
this cause (intemperance), and I am persuaded, from the 
character of the individuals and the form of their malady, 
in other cases where the causation is not assigned or can- 
not accurately be traced, that an addition of 12 per cent, 
may directly or indirectly be attached to the same origin. 
Thus we have an approximate record of 40 'per cent, of the 
madness of Middlesex as due to an unavoidable cause, and 
that cause the growing passion for drink." 

And again in January, 1882, he said, " I have seen no 
reason to alter my opinion, so frequently expressed, as to 
the part played by alcoholic intemperance in its causal 
relation to insanity. No doubt many cases occur in which 
some mental disturbance, generated by what is termed a 
moral cause — notably loss of money or friends — leads, in 
the first place, to excessive imbibition ; but I am per- 
suaded that the prime mover of all that is disarranging is 
intemperance." 

And Dr. Pritchard Davies, Medical Superintendent 
of the Barming Heath Asylum, says in the report for 
November, 1883, "Believing, as I do, that the predis- 
posing causes of insanity are very numerous, I am equally 
convinced that but for the potent exciter alcohol, insanity 
would be decreased by at least 50 per cent." 

Earl Shaftesbury, permanent chairman of the Lunacy 
Commission since 1845 (and acting chairman for many 
years, having been on the Commission some fifty years), in 
his reply to Hon. Stephen Cane, chairman of the Lunacy 
Commission of the House of Commons, 1877, said that in 
his opinion " intemperance is the cause of fully two-thirds 
of the insanity that prevails either in the drunkards 
themselves or their children ; " and in a recent address 
in the House of Lords he stated that " fully six-tenths of 
all the cases of insanity to be found in these realms 
and in America arise from no other cause than intem- 
perance." * 

* If the reader will examine the table of causes from the thirty- 
seventh Report of the Commissioners of Lunacy, July, 1883 (see 
Appendix), and remember that to this percentage of lunacy we may 
fairly add a large percentage of the other causes as being indirectly 



SOCIAL KESULTS. 271 

Mr. Multall, fhe world-stafistician, in his contribution 
on Insanity, Suicide, and Civilization, to the Contemporary 
Review (June, 1883), scouts Lord Shaftesbury's estimate, 
but admits that insanity in England caused by drink 
amounts to nearly one-third of the total insanity of the 
British kingdom ; besides which, he numbers 25,800 idiots 
as owing their condition to drunken parentage. 

Dr. Gilchrist, M.D., Medical Superintendent of the Dr. Gii- 
Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries, which has an average mony? *^^*^" 
of some five hundred inmates yearly, stated before the 
Lunacy Commission of 1877 that the larger proportion of 
dipsomaniacs are " the most hopeless, in fact, of all cases 
of insanity; they are constitutionally defective." 

Mr. Heaton, one of the Commissioners of Lunacy, 
recently mentioned to me a case of a brilliant lady who 
had now for the thirtieth time been brought to the asylum 
insane from drink. 

In the above-mentioned article Mr. Mulhall also makes 
this peculiar statement : — • 

" No one ever yet went mad from wine, any more than 
from eating cabbage, although the ancients had that im- 
pression. It is when nations discard the use of wine for 
stronger stimulants that insanity spreads devastation 
among the masses." 

French statistics of deaths for 1883 show that in three 
French provinces, whose population was not one-tenth of 
that in five others, but whose consumption of drink was 
three times as great, there were 140 suicides, while in the 
other five departments there were only sixteen ! 

As at least 20 to 28 per cent, of the insanity in 
French asylums is alcoholic, and as wine is the chief 
drink of the Frenchman, the question is — was it wine or 
? 



In a letter to the Times (September 5, 1883), William Mr. Hoyie 
Hoyle says, "The returns of lunacy show that its increase fuQalT^^n^^^ 
has been even greater than that of crime. In 1852 the England and 
numbers of lunatics in England and Wales were 21,158 ; in '^^^^^• 
1881 the numbers were 73,113." 

occasioned by drink (heredity over one-half), it will be apparent 
that Lord Shaftesbury's report is not likely to prove an exaggeration 
when this subject has received even more close scientific investigation 
than at present. 



272 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Dr. T. S. Clouston,* in his lecture on The Effects of the 
Excessive Use of Alcohol on the Mental Functions of the 
Brain, delivered to tlie students of the University of' 
Edinburgh (December 19, 1883), said, " We know as a 
statistical fact that from fifteen to twenty per cent, of the 
actual insanity of the country is produced by the excessive 
use of alcohol. In that case, as we have about one person 
to every three hundred in the population insane, it follows 
that one person in every two thousand of our people, 
counting men, women, and children, become insane, and 
deprived of their reason, of their power of action, of their 
power of enjoyment, and of their personal liberty from 
this cause. This makes about 17,500 persons at any one 
given time in the British Empire who are so incapacitated 
by reason of mental alienation, produced through the 
excessive and continuous use of alcohol. These people are 
as good as dead while they are insane ; they do no work 
• for the world or in the world, and all that makes life 
worth having to them, they are deprived of. In these 
cases you have got to the acme of the bad effects of 
alcohol on the mental functions of the brain ; you have 
arrived, as it were, at the worst that alcohol can do to a 
man's mental functions, and you will all admit that it is a 
bad enough result, and it occurs in the large number of 
cases I have mentioned. 

" But you must remember that these numbers are 
merely of those so well known as to be available for 
statistics, merely the registered persons who have been so 
ill as to have been sent to asylums through the excessive 
use of alcohol. For every one of these who had become 
really insane, there are no doubt a large number who have 
become partially affected in mind, but not to such an 
extent as that it has been necessary to deprive them of 
their liberty, but who, nevertheless, are affected in mind 
through the excessive use of alcohol to some extent, and 
who are many of them partially insane." 

And W. J. Corbet, M.P., in a striking paper, Is Insanity 
on the Increase ? (Fortnightly Bevieiv, April, 1884) says 
that after being engaged " for many years, and under 
special circumstances, in studying the statistics of insanity, 

* Physician Superintendent of the Royal Edinburgh Asylum at 
Morningside, the largest insane asylum in Scotland. 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 



273 



I have reluctantly come to the conclnsion that facts and 
figures establish clearly the progressive growth of the 
malady." He summarizes his facts and figures in the 
subjoined table : — 



Date. 


Country. 


No. of 
insane. 


Population. 


Ratio of 

insane per 

1000. 


1862 


England 

Ireland 

Scotland 

Total 

England 

Ireland 

Scotland 

Total 

England 

Ireland 

Scotland 

Total 


41,129 

8,055 
6,341 


20,336,476 
5,798,967 
3,062,294 


2-02 
1-36 
21 




55,525 


29,197,737 


1-81 


1872 


58,640 

10,767 

7,606 


23,074,600 
5,368,696 
3,339,226 


2-54 
2-04 
2-26 




77,013 


31,782,522 


2-41 


1882 


75,072 
13,444 
10,335 


25,798,922 
5,294,436 
3,695,456 


9-90 
2-54 
2-80 




98,851 


34,788,814 


2-8 



And thus comments thereon : " It is singular to note 
that, save that the ratio of insane to sane is greatest 
in England and least in Ireland, the conditions through- 
out are so alike as to be almost identical. The actual 
growth of numbers is continuous and regular, as if 
influenced by some inscrutable law ; there is a steady 
unchecked current of increase, in accommodation, expen- 
diture, numbers, and, strangest of all, in ' cures.' It 
would be only wearisome to enter more fully into statisti- 
cal details ; any one who wishes and has leisure can 
scrutinize them for himself. The plain fact stands out, 
however others may try to disguise it in words, that in 
the brief course of two decades the insane in the three 
kingdoms have nearly doubled in number, in spite of 
the most elaborate and costly means provided to cure 
them. There is, moreover, another alarming feature, in 
that we evidently do not yet know the worst. The 
ominous words, ' inadequate accommodation ' and ' increase 

,T 



274 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Sanger on 
alcohol as a 
cause of 
prostitution. 



of provision,' run through the whole series of reports 
from beginning to end." 

After saying that alcohol is a chief cause in the pro- 
duction of insanity, and having quoted the already 
mentioned statement made by Lord Shaftesbury before 
the Select Committee, Mr. Corbet says — 

" I go a step further, and hold that there is abundant 
evidence to prove that to dissipation, drunkenness, and 
moral depravity, either directly or consequentially by 
transmission to the next generation, is to be charged an 
immense proportion of the annual increase of lunacy. ISTo 
person of authority, I think, will be found to deny that 
evil and corrupt living in the parents bears fruit in an 
unhealthy state both of body and mind in their offspring. 
In the lower animals the transmission not only of generic 
qualities, but even of individual singularities, is a familiar 
fact ; so with mankind it is not to be expected that a pure 
stream will issue from a polluted source ; and how foul 
and corrupt that source must be, any one who sees the 
habits of the swarms of unfortunate creatures who nightly 
crowd the streets of any of our great cities may determine 
for himself. ... It is said that people nowadays are 
impatient of restraint, and betray a tendency to abandon 
all attempt at self-discipline and to yield to every impulse, 
whether good or bad. If true, it is sad indeed, for it is, 
and from time immemorial has been, an indication of 
national decay. The great empires of old perished, not 
from sudden and violent convulsions, but from the moral 
degradation of their people, from internal rottenness 
amounting to national insanity. Quern deus vult jperdere 
jpriiis dementat.'" 

In Sanger's History of Prostitution, its Extent, Causes, 
and Effects (New York, 1858), we read — 

" Apart from the drinking system, which I believe to be 
the most prolific source of prostitution in Britain, the 
following may be stated as among the principal causes : 
one-fourth from being servants in inns and public-houses 
and beer-shops, etc. Were the disuse of alcoholic drinks, 
except under medical treatment, to become general, in six 
months we should be rid of prostitution by at least one- 
half." * 

* In the House of Commons' Committee on Drink (1834) it was 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 275 

In a summing up of the general results brought about Summary of 
in this country (England) by drink, I can hardly do better Jj^nk S '''' 
than quote the results summarized in the voluminous report before the 
on drink laid before the Belgian Chambers of Representa- chimbers by 
tives by the then Minister of Instruction, Prere-Orban Frere-Orbaa 
(Brussels, 1868), in which the following facts are given as 
the drink results for England : — 

1. ]Srine-tenths of the paupers (of whom, according to 
Hoyle, there were over three and a half millions in 1881). 

2. Three-fourths of the criminals. 

3. One-half the diseases. 

4. One-third of the insanity. 

5. Three-fourths of the depravity of children and young 
people. 

6. One-third of the shipwrecks. 

As to the condition in Belgium, the London Daily 
Reivs (March 8, 1884) says — 

" A statement just issued by the Belgian Patriotic 
League against Drunkenness thus sums up the present 
aspect of the great drink question in Belgium: The 
number of public-houses in that country, which, was 53,000 
in 1850, had increased to 125,000 in 1880, and is now 
130,000. The number of suicides during the last forty 
years has increased 80 per cent., the number of insane 
104 per cent. ; of convicts 135 per cent. Of the workmen 
who die in the hospitals 80 per cent, are habitual drunkards. 
The conclusion arrived at by the league is that the Belgians 
are the most intemperate people in the world." 

§ 67. As to the United States, Mr. H. A. Thomson read 
an able paper at the Melbourne International Conference, 
1880, in which he said — 

" Dr. Edward Young, chief of the Bureau of Statistics, 
Washington, estimated the cost of liquor to the nation in Dr. Edward 
1867 to be about 600,000,000 dollars. The estimate should JZnir'^^ 
be much greater now. Dr. Hargreaves, in Our Wasted drink bin of 
Resources (New York, 1876), makes the cost in 1872 to be sutes!"''^ 
735,720,048 dollars Add to this direct cost tbe conse- 
quential cost, and we have a drain upon the nation annually 
of 1,500,000,000 dollars. Upon the basis of Dr. Young, 

stated that at a dinner -party wliere the guests were nearly all dis- 
tillers, one of them gave this toast — " The distillers' best friend, the 
poor prostitutes of London ! " 



276 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

fhe cost of intoxicating beverages in the United States was 
one-sixth of the value of its mannfactures, which in 1870 
were 4,232,325,442 dollars; one-fourth of all the farm pro- 
ductions and additions of stock in that year, valued at 
2,447,538,658 dollars. All the slaughtered animals, home 
manufactures, fruit products, market garden and orchard 
products, which were in value 527,242,403 dollars, were 
92,182,707 dollars less than the cost of our nation's drink 
bill. In the same year our drink bill was 145,621,273 
dollars more than the value of all furniture and house 
fixtures . . . which were valued at 473,803,837 dollars, 
and of all the articles of wear, including boots and shoes, 
hats and caps, hosiery, etc., manufactured in the country. 
Again, the value of all the food preparations of 1870 was 
19,059,539 dollars less than the cost of the nation's drink 
bill. We are shown by the same author that the cost of 
liquor for ten years is nearly two-thirds of the assessed 
value (9,914,780,825 dollars) of all the real estate in the 
United States ; while the assessed value of all the personal 
property (4,264,205,907 dollars) is but little more than 
tivo-thirds of our drink bill for ten years." 

Mr. Powell, And at the Crystal Palace Temperance Jubilee (Sep- 

SriTquS tember, 1882), Mr. Powell, of New York, read a paper of 

industry of the Same import, stating that — 

statS!"""^ " There were in 1881, 5210 distilleries. These consumed 

31,291,146 bushels of grain, with an aggregate production 
of 117,728,150 gallons of proof spirits. For the fiscal year 
ending June 30, 1882, the total amount of revenue to the 
National Treasury from distilled spirits was 69,873,408.18 
dollars ; from fermented liquors 16,153,920.42 dollars. The 
total beer production for the same period, as reported to 
the Internal Revenue Department, was 16,952,085 barrels. 
A brewers' authority gives the number of breweries at 
2830, and estimates that there are 1,681,870 acres of land 
under cultivation for barley and hops. The author of 
Our Wasted Resources gives the annual liquor bill of the 
United States at 735,000,000 dollars. In 1880, according 
to the record of the Internal Revenue Department, there 
were of wholesale dealers in distilled spirits, 4065 ; of retail 
dealers, 166,891 ; of wholesale dealers in fermented liquors, 
2065 ; of retail dealers, 8952 ; an aggregate of both whole- 
sale and retail dealers in both distilled and fermented 



SOCIAL EESULTS. 



277 



liquors of 181,973. Counting 1000 to a regiment, we liave 
a liquor-selling army of 181 regiments, commissioned by 
the Grovernment of the United States to perpetuate the 
kingdom of unrighteousness and to obstruct the onward 
progress of the temperance reform." 

A recent number of the New York Temperance Advocate The New 



United States : — 


J.- OULl^XXO-C^-J, V^U. ^^^^^^ 




Temperance 
Advocate on 
the liquor 
revenue of 




Eeceipts from dis- 


Eeceipts from fer- 


Fiscal years ended 


tilled spirits. 


mented liquors. 


the United 


June 30. 


Dollars. 


Dollars. 


States (1863- 


1863 ... 


5,176,530 .... 


.. 1,628,934 


1882). 


1864 


30,329,149 .... 


.. 2,290,009 




1865 ... 


18,731,422 .... 


.. 3,734,928 




1866 


33,268,172 .... 


5,220,553 




1867 ... 


... 33,542,952 .... 


.. 6,057,501 




1868 


18,655,631 .... 


.. 5,955,769 




1869 ... 


45,071,231 .... 


.. 6,099,879 




1870 


55,606,094 .... 


.. 6,319,127 




1871 ... 


46,281,818 .... 


7,389,502 




1872 


49,475,516 .... 


8,258,498 




1873 ... 


... 52,099,372 .... 


.. 9,324,938 




1874 


49,444,090 .... 


.. 9,304,680 




1875 ... 


... 52,081,991 .... 


.. 9,144,004 




1876 


56,426,365 .... 


.. 9,571,281 




1877 ... 


... 57.469,430 .... 


.. 9,480,789 




1878 


50,420,816 .... 


.. 9,937,052 




1879 ... 


52,570,285 .... 


.. 10,729,320 




1880 


61,185,509 .... 


.. 12,829,803 




1881 ... 


... 67,153,975 .... 


.. 13,700,241 




1882 


69,873,408 .... 


.. 16,153,920 




Total dolla 


rs ... 904,863,756 .... 


. 163,130,728 





The Evening Standard (February 10, 1883), quoting London 
from the just issued report of the National Bureau of f/'^"!"^^ 
Statistics for the United States, says — liquor con- 

" The consumption (not manufactured) of distilled t'JeTinii^ed" 
spiiits during the years 1878, 1879, 1880, 1881, and 1882 states. 
respectively, was 57,111,982, 54,278,475, 63,526,694, 
70,607,081, and 73,556,036 gallons. For the same years the 
consumption of wipes, native and foreign, was 19,812,675, 
24,532,015,_28,484,428, 24,231,106, and 25,628,071 gallons. 
But the chief increase has been in malt liquors, which aggre- 
gated 310,653,253, 345,076,118, 414,771,690, 444,806,373, 
and 527,051,236 gallons. 

As to the drink traffic in ITew York city, the New York The Neio 



278 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



York Herald 
on the num- 
ber of rum- 
ehops in New 
York City, 



Dr. Howard 
Crosby on 
the same 
subject. 



The condi- 
tion of Bir- 
mingham in 
this respect ; 
the evidence 
of Mr. J. 
Chamber- 
lain, M.P. 



The Pall 
Mall Gazette 
on the num- 
ber of public- 
houses in 
proportion 
to the in- 
habitants of 
the various 
States of the 
Union. 



Herald (February 26, 1883) comments to tlie effect tliat 
there are over ten thousand rum shops in the city of New 
York, or one to every 125 inhabitants, one to every 25 
families. "Various shops and stores where bread, meat, 
and groceries can be procured foot up 7326 ; in other 
words, there are 2749 more rum shops than food shops in 
New York city," But, as regards London, as long ago as 
1835, Mr. Mark Moore, in his evidence before the Parlia- 
mentary committee on drink, stated that the number of 
places for the sale of distilled spirits exceeded that of 
bakers, butchers, and fishmongers together. 

In a lecture delivered also in 1883, on the Glory and 
Shame of New York, Dr. Howard Crosby said that there 
were 12,000 grog shops in New York city, or one to every 
hundred inhabitants. 

But deplorable as these figures are, they do not measure 
with some Great Britain furnishes. For example, at the 
annual licensing sessions held at Birmingham, September 6, 
1883, deputations from the Good Templars and the United 
Kingdom Alliance " presented memorials against the grant- 
ing of new licences, and urged the magistrates to withhold 
others which were not absolutely necessary. Birmingham, 
it was stated, had 2240 licensed houses, or one to every 35 
inhabitants. J. Chamberlain, M.P., in his evidence before 
the Lords Committee on Intemperance (1879), stated that 
" out of seventy large towns, fifty have more public-houses 
than Birmingham." 

Concerning public-houses in America, the Pall Mall 
Gazette for May 4, 1883, furnishes the following statistics: — 

" In Nevada there is one drinking saloon to every 65 
inhabitants ; in Colorado, one to every 76 ; in California, 
one to every 99 ; the rest of the States supplying the 
following number of inhabitants to each drinking saloon : 
— Oregon, 176; New Jersey, 179; New York, 192; 
Louisiana, 200 ; Ohio, 225 ; Connecticut, 246 ; Massa- 
chusetts, 256 ; Delaware, 258 ; Pennsylvania, 263 ; Rhode 
Island, 266 ; Illinois, 267 ; Maryland, 293 ; Wisconsin, 
304; Minnesota, 311 ; Missouri, 337; Michigan, 350; New 
Hampshire, 376 ; Iowa, 377 ; Indiana, 380 ; Kentucky, 
438 ; Nebraska, 487 ; Tennessee, 525 ; Texas, 549 ; Arkansas, 
554 ; Alabama, 608 ; Georgia, 612 ; Florida, 653 ; Missis- 
sippi, 654 ; Yirginia, 693 ; North Carolina, 708 ; Maine, 



SOCIAL KESULTS. 279 

791; Vermont, 812; West Virginia, 817; Kansas, 876; 
and Sonth CaroliDa, 708. It thus appears tliat the twelve 
States in which there were fewest drinking saloons were 
all Southern, except Vermont, and leaving out, of course, 
Maine and Kansas, in which States drinking saloons are 
prohibited by law." 

Dr. Lee, of Philadelphia, in Report of Insanity (1868), Dr. Lee on 
gave for the year 1860 one insane person to every 1305 fjisanit**^ 
inhabitants, and in 1868, one to every 700. In his Dr. wiiicins 
Insanity and Insane Asylums (Sacramento, 1872), Dr. E. T. ^'^^^^ ^*'"^- 
Wilkins, Commissioner in Lunacy for the State of Cali- 
fornia, states (p. 211) that he is of opinion intoxication is 
a far mightier cause of mental diseases than all other causes 
put together. 

In Alcoholic Insanity (New York, 1883), Dr. Lewis D. Dr. Mason's 
]\^ason says, " In a study of 600 cases of inebriety treated statement. 
at the Inebriate Asylum, Fort Hamilton, I found that 166 
persons had 309 attacks of alcoholic mania in some form 
at various times during their periods of alcoholic addiction. 
In the annual report of the New York State Lunatic 
Asylum for 1883, of the 412 cases tabulated, in 32, or in a 
little less than one in 13, ' intemperance ' was stated as the 
exciting cause." 

The last United States census shows that there has 
been a most alarming increase in the number of lunatics 
and idiots during the last decade ; while the population 
has increased by 30 per cent., the increase of the insane is 
given as a little over 155 per cent. 

In his Manual of Psychological Medicine (New York, Dr. Mann, of 
1883), Dr. Mann says, "It is impossible to estimate the JJfJdhoiic 
complex influences that intemperance exerts in the produc- insanity, 
tion of insanity. All observers agree that it is intimately 
connected with, and is one of the main exciting causes of, 
insanity. . . . Many superintendents of foreign asylums 
have estimated the admissions from intemperance at 25 per 
cent, or higher, including not only the proximate but 
remote cause of the disease. This percentage will be 
largely increased if we take into account the great number 
of cases in which intemperance of parents causes the 
insanity or idiocy of their offspring. Dr. L. Lunier estimates 
that 50 per cent, of all the idiots and imbeciles to be found 



280 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

in tlie large cities of Europe have liad parents wlio were 

notorious drunkards." 

Maximedu And in the Revue des deux Mondes (1872) Maxime du 

drink-petro-^ Camp says that the frequency of mental diseases in Paris 

lomaniaof is very largely attributable to the insobriety which has 

TheTiege""^ enormously increased there daring the last two years ; — 

that in the siege the workman drank more than he fought, 

and under the Commune drink was given out to make 

them fight; that in nine months' time Paris consumed 

five times as much alcohol as formerly in one year, with 

the results of prevalence of delirium tremens, and the 

destructive outbreak of petrolomania. 

Dr. Baer on Speaking of the general passion for drink in France, 

ffo'ifinThr" ^^- Baer, in his AlcohoUsmus (Berlin, 1878), deplores the 

French army effect of this evIl on the nation, and states that "unpreju- 

drink. ^ diced and highly intelligent men attribute the severe 

defeats in the last war with Germany in no small degree 

to the disorder, want of discipline, and incapability of 

resistance which has been produced and nurtured in the 

French army by the predominant craving for di-ink in both 

military and civil life.* 

" During the siege, Paris was seized by a mental 
epidemic of acute alcoholism, and alcoholism is one of the 
principal sources of the deeds of abomination and shame 
occurring with the rising of the Commune." 

Official statistics show that in 1882 there were 13,434 
admissions to the French asylums. Of these, 10,184 were 
new cases. The total number treated in these asylums 
during the year was 58,760, of whom 31,000 were women 
and 27,000 were men ; and it is estimated that a large 

* In his Hereditary Alcoliolism (Medical Thesis, Paris, 1880), 
' Dr. Gendron says — 

" If we require proofs of the effects of alcoholic heredity on stature 
and muscular strength, we surely find them in the recruiting registers, 
which show that certain districts where alcoholism prevails cannot 
furnish the required average of conscripts. The arrondissement of 
Domfront, in Normandy, consumes proportionately the largest amount 
of alcohol ; in that arrondissement the canton of Pussais and the com- 
mune of Mantilly especially are notable for excessive drinking ; 
even if all the able-bodied men were taken in Pussais, the recruitment 
would still be insufficient, and Mantilly is in this respect below all 
other communes." 



SOCIAL RESULTS. 281 

proportion of this yearly augmenting increase is due to 
alcoholism. 

Dr. E. Lanceraux, in his essay On Alcoholism and its 
Go7iseque7ices (Paris, 1878), charges alcoholism with being 
a principal cause of the decrease in the population of 
France and other countries. " Assisted by tuberculosis," 
says Dr. Lanceraux, " alcoholism has long been one of the 
principal causes of decreased population in many quarters 
of the world. These two causes united have contributed 
much more than iron or fire to more and more reduce the 
number of natives of North and South America. To 
this also is due the progressive disparity among the 
inhabitants of a great number of islands in the Pacific ; 
notably the Marquesas, Sandwich, Tahiti, and others. 
But we need only to observe what is going on in our own 
midst to recognize alcohol as a cause of depopulation. 
Many statisticians and economists are justly alarmed at 
the decrease in population of one of the most favoured 
provinces in France, and each furnishes his own ex- 
planation of the fact. If we examine into the matter we 
find that in Normandy, where a great quantity of brandy 
is distilled, alcoholism is most rampant. The notion 
prevails there that it is necessary to give infants wine 
and liquor in order to strengthen them. This pernicious 
habit, together with the general alcoholic excesses so 
common in Normandy, undoubtedly form one of the 
principal sources of the decreasing population of this 
rich province." 

In a recent address before the National Association for Dr. Baer, of 
the Protection of the Insane,* Dr. Baer said — Scohoiand 

"In comparing the number of drinking saloons in the insanity iu 
different provinces of the kingdom of Prussia with the ^™^^^^- 
number of insane, both in public institutions and in private 
families, as gleaned from the census report of 1871, I was 
enabled to show conclusively that everywhere where the 
number of drinking places, i.e., the consumption of alcohol, 
was the greatest, the number of insane was also the largest. 
Without doubt, to my mind, it is in alcohol that we must 
look for and will find the most potent cause of the develop- 
ment and spread of mental diseases." 

* American Psychological Journal (quarterly), Philadelphia (Oct. 
1883). 



282 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Finkei- The Quarterly Journal of Inebriety (Hartford, Con- 

iSirn*^' necticut, U.S.), October, 1883, sajs that, "According to 
Health Com- Dr. Finkei burg, member of the .Russian Public Health 
the same in Commission, alcoholic liquors cause over two-fifths of all 
the insanity, and five-eighths of all the criminality." 



Russia. 



( 283 ) 



CHAPTER XI. 

. ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 

§ 68. It seems probable, from tbe great sum of testimony 
— so probable that it may be assumed as certain — tbat 
there was a time when the evil habit of alcoholic intoxication 
was unknown to man. According to Dr. Baer, many races 
still existing, or only recently extinct, had no knowledge 
of intoxicants. 

Dr. E. G. Eigg, in his paper On the Physiological 
Operation of Alcohol {Temperance Spectator, London, 1862), 
cites the following examples : — 

" The Portuguese and other Arctic navigators testify 
to the ignorance of the frigid zone in this particular. 
Columbus and his Spanish successors described a race 
more beautiful and refined than aborigines generally are, 
amongst whom no trace of an intoxicant existed. The 
Erench gave the same verdict as to the ISTorthern American 
continent, and the English, under Cook, so far as Australia 
and the Polynesian islands are concerned, corroborate the 
same fact. In the penetration of Africa from its eastern 
or western coast, it has not been seen save as an article of 
importation. In fact, in every locality first developed to 
civilized enterprise, alcohol in any of its varieties was un- 
known. Those describing the early habits of the Calmuc 
Tartars will contest this statement, insisting that the 
favourite beverage of those savages was a fermentation of 
the milk of maies. The truth of this assertion conceded, 
must not the educated chemist at once understand that 
the fermentation referred to was merely the development 
of lactic acid by transposition of the saccharine element in 
the milk ? In his description of the Islands of the South 



mischief. 



284 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Pacific, Melville mentions tlie existence of a liquor 
affirmed to be an intoxicant from his own observation of its 
apparent effect on tliose wlio partook of it. The mode 
of preparation, however, refutes the idea that it was a 
fermented fluid. It was simply the expressed juice of a 
herb which was drunk before fermentation could have 
been realized. Independently of this, we have the positive 
testimony of John Williams, that the American traders 
were the first to introduce intoxicants, and the earliest 
inebriators of these Pacific Islands." 
Origin of the But in the most remote historic period the use of 
intoxicants had become comparatively common, and, with 
the knowledge we now possess of the subtlety and stealthi- 
ness of these poisons, we can easily see how individuality 
was undermined by their use, and the natural passions 
changed into insatiable demands, before man really under- 
stood the origin of the mischief. And as his awakening 
to these moral effects probably took place only wlien the 
worst — the weakening of his power to resist — had been 
accomplished, he invented, as moral weakness always does, 
excuses for his excesses. 

He denied the evil results of which he was both the 
illustration and proof. He ascribed a host of excellent 
effects to alcohol. When these benefits failed to appear, 
and harm alone — harm that could not be hidden — followed 
upon his indulgences, he charged the trouble to Providence, 
or to the blind forces of nature, and posed as the victim of 
mysteries with which he could not hope to contend. 

These pleas are made, this self-deception is practised 
still ; yet it is man who put himself into this pit, and now 
at last he knows that it is so, and that it is he who must 
lift himself out. 

By his first ignorant indulgence in intoxication, man 
placed himself in a continuity of circumstances which 
were certain to drag the individual and the race to lower 
and lower life-levels ; not necessarily as regards outward 
appearances, refinements, and comforts — civilization has 
made marvellous progress in these directions — but as 
regards the highest purposes of our being here and inhabit- 
ing bodies at all, as regards our discovering and obeying 
those laws of eternal truth which now and then in all of 
us force, if only momentary, recognition. For the light of 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 285 

tlie Crown held vainly over the head of the man with the 
ninck-rake does sometimes penetrate with a moment's 
flash the rubbish we grope in. 

§ 69. The development of the race is like that of the Likeness in 
individual : it begins in both in an eager desire to be happy ^enTJf iace 
and an eager search for the means of happiness. andin- 

The baby finds this desire satisfied with plenty of milk, The^ii^^* 
warmth, soft conching, and slumber. His mother's bosom, dividual 
and the bed where he lies with her, makes his world. happiness. 

A little later, the horizon widens to the walls of the 
room and the vaguely wondered-at shining spaces which 
the windows show. He finds that it hurts to fall. The 
result is instantly unpleasant. He becomes cautious. 

He finds that raisins taste good, that sugar is delicious. 
He eats of these voraciously. The result is immediate 
pleasure ; and when nausea and headache follow, it is the 
nurse or mamma who is to blame, not his own gluttony. 
By the time he has learned the last fact, the raisin and 
sugar-eating habit is formed, and stands mightily in the 
way of reform. The pleasure is sweet and immediate. He 
tries to assure himself that the pain coming after is due 
to some other cause ; to anything he is willing to give up, 
rather than to the one thing he is unwilling to resign. 

He is still a child, to whom the self of the senses is all 
the self and all of happiness or unhappiness that exists. 

As he grows older, various things — the widening of his 
visible world, the strange interest felt in his own growth, 
the influence of companions and circumstances, the care 
and guidance of his parents, etc., etc. — have all had their 
effect on his development ; he has learned some self- 
restraint, gained some little knowledge of himself, of his 
relations to others ; and, if his circumstances have been 
very favourable to moral growth, he begins to see that the 
senses do not compass the whole meaning of happiness, 
and learns that they are not even a chief part of it, that 
happiness lies not in having good things for himself, but 
in being worthy to have good things, whether they come 
or not; by desiring, above all things, the rights and 
happiness of others ; by doing heartily all he can to bring 
about general happiness — universal happiness ; and thus 
actually, genuinely, and really being happy himself. 

The child, grown to maturity in this way, leads a large 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

life and a complete life, whatever his condition or position 
may happen to be, because he irradiates real happiness. 
He is a centre from which it rays out, wherever that centre 
be placed ; and this irradiation has a widening effect, like 
that of the circle around the stone cast in the water: it 
never stops short of the two shores of life — the shore of 
the beginning and the shore of the unending. 

Self-denials for the sake of others are his dearest 
indulgences, and as far removed in essence and effect from 
the morbid, anchoretic, nobody-benefiting sacrifices of 
St. Simon Stylites and his ilk as the shower of sweet 
spring rain is different from the outbreak of a sewer. 

He will not think for one moment of the pleasure to 
him of an otherwise perfectly innocent indulgence, if his 
having, means temptation and struggle for any other. 
The happiness of the senses, of self, has given place to the 
only true or lasting happiness, the happiness of Abou 
Ben-Adhem, who "loved his fellow-men ! " 

But if, on the other hand, the child is not well trained, 
if his circumstances are those of the foolishly indulged 
and pampered household pet, however talented and clever 
he may be, and whatever else he may learn, he grows up 
grossly and fatally ignorant of what he is here for, of what 
is due from himself to himself, of what is due from him to 
others. He is a centre from which radiates discontent, 
greed, tyranny — towards whom must flow constant tribute. 
He will deny himself nothing that he desires — no, not 
even for his own good, much less for the rights and 
happiness of another. He is lonely, because he has spoiled 
himself for his own society ; and over those who Tnust be 
with him he exerts an influence which, however it may 
stir disgust, also contaminates and gradually drags them 
into more or less real fellowship with him ; for the 
spectacle of selfishness, continually triumphing in its 
exactions, is one of the most deteriorating in its effects 
upon those who must constantly behold it. And especially 
great is the ascendency of this kind of evil with the 
individual and with society, when it is accompanied by the 
intellectual flashes and eccentric humours, the shallow, 
sudden generosities— purely for sensation sake, but cited 
as virtues — which convivial circles so much affect. 

As with the individual, so with the race. In its infancy 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 287 

it fonnd the taste of alcohol as the babe found the sugar — searches for 
sweet. The pain that came after it, it would not heed, and ^*pp^^^^^- 
when at last forced to heed by overwhelming evil results, 
it souo-ht, like the sugar- nauseated child, to secure itself 
in its now all- enthralling habit by evasions and specious 
reasonings. 

Later on, as the race grew into knowledge of things 
good and evil, we have seen how, in spite of great general 
advancement in many things — in spite of enormous strides 
in all directions of scientific, philosophical, artistic, and 
material knowledge — in spite, too, of what steam and elec- 
tricity have done to melt and forge the nations, tribes, and 
peoples into one brotherhood — a fraternity in no way so 
cruelly betrayed as in its mutual upholding and guiltiness 
of this deadly universal vice — in spite, too, of single in- 
stances of the noblest individual heroism and self-abnega- 
tion, of decades here and there in which national life and 
character have shone with extraordinary lustre of inspira- 
tion for all succeeding time — still we find that the habit of 
alcoholic intoxication which the race formed in its child- 
hood has been suffered to grow with its growth, and so 
poisons us in our maturity that we do not, as a race, yet 
comprehend what happiness is, but still continue to mistake 
the temporary exaltations of alcohol, and other sense- 
excitants, for real glimpses of that highest scope and 
regnancy of being from which it shuts us out and down. 

Reasoning from the past, we may feel sure that the 
instinct of progress, the laws of development, of evolution, 
which are coeval with man, must be his essential nature so 
long as he exists. The eager desire to be happy, the eager 
search for happiness, will go on. 

And we may comfort ourselves at the outset with the 
certainty that this desire, this search, this resistless out- 
reaching impulse of man must in itself be good, for it is 
part of man as God made him. By it God is perpetually 
calling to man, " Seek Me, find Me, and in Me find eternal 
life, eternal joy ! " 

But what concerns us instantly and mightily is to find 
out what to seek, and how to seek it. 

A little child stands alone at night in a great forest. Both mis- 
He gropes for light, even though not quite understanding Ignis fatuus 
what light is or what it can do for him. A bright star, for the star. 



288 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

twinkling in the sky just over his father's roof, sends a 
long white ray — straight as truth is straight — by which 
the little one, if he only sees it, can go directly to his 
father's door. But at the same moment a glow-worm, 
flitting and flashing before him, seems to his unlearned eye 
a nearer and brighter light, and he stumbles after it 
through bog and mire. At moments he clasps it in delight, 
but again and again it eludes, it escapes, or, being clutched, 
. . flares up and fades out ; while the deluded child, bruised 
and cold, goes ever farther and farther from home. 

He was right to search for light — the tiny immortal 
spark within him made such search natural and certain. 
But he lacked wisdom to distinguish between the phantom- 
flame of the will-o'-the-wisp and the pure perennial ray of 
the star; and when the alternations of feverish triumph 
and bitter disappointment had taught him his mistake, 
he was exhausted — he lacked strength to return — and 
besides, the star had grown to look very far away and dim, 
for the fitful glimmer he followed had weakened his eyes, 
and the habit of chasing it drew him on till he sank to 
rise no more. 
First So with man in the earliest stages of his development. 

toXrd^^ The world of sensation was the first in which he found 
knowledge himself. His reasoning faculties first applied themselves 
th^eTe'nses.^ here, and held back his spiritual perceptions. What felt 
good, what felt bad ; what he wanted, what he didn't 
want ; what he liked to do, and what he didn't like to do ; 
these things guided him. He did not analyze second, third, 
and fourth results. 

And in this stage of being his search for happiness, 
instead of leading him out and up in life, chained him to 
himself. He was his own horizon, his own zenith and 
-nadir; for self-seeking — that is, the effort to please and 
gratify only one's self—can only go on within the life of 
the senses. Pleasurable sensations, physical delights ; 
separated from all thought or care for the rights and 
delights of others ; to be gained at the expense of these, at 
any cost, so that they are gained ; these have been and are 
the self-seeker's ideal of happiness — to him the glow-worm 
inevitably obscures the star. 
Alcohol And in alcohol he believed he had found the crowning 

be a^^rea? agent for producing a strange pleasure of its own, which 



these con- 
ditions. 



OEIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 289 

liad also power to enhance and vary kindred pleasures in- agent for 
dul^d in with it.* TppS. 

By this undue development of the senses, the normal Natural 
appetites, tastes, and passions of man were transformed S pSons 
into the various lusts of the flesh ; the lust of acquisition, changed into 
arraying him against his brother in bloody conquests for h™s by^the 
power, for possessions, making" him covet l^aboth's vineyard abnormal 

^ 1 XT- 1 , 1 , •£ x-u 1 i -c 1 • -u- ^ 4J 4. development 

andlSaboths wife; the lust oi ease, making him deai to of the senses. 

the cry of the down-trodden and impoverished, lest to listen 

should prove troublesome ; the lust of gold, that Shylock 

lust whose sordid outcry, " Oh, my ducats, my ducats ! Oh, 

my daughter ! " shows to what level the lust of gold can 

sink the sacredest ties of love ; the lust of the eye, which 

turns men and women into birds of prey, and manhood and 

womanhood into moral quicksands, where modesty, love, 

and the divine purposes of sex are irrecoverably degraded 

and lost. 

But while this was going on through the ages, the Spiritual and 
spiritual and mental powers of man were also slowly un- gress under 
folding and beginning to struggle through the meshes 
woven by the senses ; beginning also, though at first but 
dimly and fitfully, to assert their sway as masters in the 
stead of the usurping senses, and to find that these, in their 
headlong, egoistic, untutored search for happiness, had 
produced conditions wholly foreign to it. 

* Of course, I do not mean to imply that tlie senses are in them- 
selves coarse or degrading, or that all self-seeking is plainly and 
vulgarly manifested, as the foregoing might seem to imply. The 
senses are what they should be, when bearing their proper relation of 
capable and docile servants to the rounded individuality of man. But 
when they lead and control, they lose the invaluable qualities of the 
faithful servant, without gaining one quality by which they can fitly 
lead. And the man who abdicates to his senses, descends from the 
throne where God placed him, and submits his head to his own heel. 
This is the condition of him whose search for happiness begins and 
ends with self ; and it is an openly low or apparently refined condition 
according to the great differences in the temperaments, personal con- 
ditions, and surroundings of men. And alcohol — more than all intoxi- 
cants — has great paramount power to bring about this surrender to 
the senses ; for, as is well known and indisputable, passions of which 
man is master in a sober state, alcohol will not only fire beyond his 
control, but reinforce with others that never awakened in sobriety, 
and make him do scores of shameful things of which, but for its in- 
fluence, he would be utterly incapable. 

U 



290 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The two 
great 

fections into 
which this 
development 
has divided 
mankind. 
The graspers 
who succeed. 



The srraspers 
who fail. 



Alcohol a 
powerful 
agent in 
restricting 
man to the 
life of the 
senses. 



Egoism and sensuality had. put the world " out of joint," 
had dismembered it, as it were, into two great factions — 
the graspers who succeed, and the graspers who fail. 

The first are the few, but the all-powerful in having 
secured more than the lion's share of this world's treasures 
and possessions, and the power to continue to gain and hold 
these ; in having absorbed to their own service the results 
of the general total of physical and mental labour; and 
who have, by the processes thus resulting, as well as by 
the result itself, so removed themselves from the other 
faction that, though they know it exists, they do not under- 
stand the elements of which it is composed ; are cold to its 
necessities, deaf to its claims, stone-blind to their own 
responsibilities toward it, and therefore fatally indifferent 
to, fatally ignorant of, the tragedy to which it tends. 

The other faction — the graspers who do not succeed, 
who, in the same self-seeking struggle for an ignis-fatuus 
happiness, have been driven to the wall — they are innumer- 
able, and they ignorantly hate and envy those whom they 
fancy have attained the object of the unequal conflict, not 
seeing that victory which consists in satisfaction of self and 
the senses is really a worse defeat than their own, so far as 
true happiness is concerned ; for it is of the rich man that 
it is written, he shall not easily enter the kingdom of 
heaven, while the poor man is assured he shall, if he only 
will, find that kingdom within him. 

Yet perhaps these — the poor, the depressed — see a little 
further into the portent of this unnatural struggle ; they 
have so little to hoard, so little treasure to guard, that they 
hoard their own sense of wrong — not always seeing where 
blame is due — and count over the coin of disappointment 
which gluts the mints of resentment and despair. 

In this tension, neither the rich nor the poor are happy, 
neither are blameless. Both feel the undying yearning 
which selfishness has done its utmost to destroy ; life, 
exhausted in the intermittent, swiftly cloying pleasures 
of the senses, beats wearily upon worn-out strings that 
scarcely can any longer vibrate. And one raeans all- 
powerful in producing and protracting this delusion, a 
means which more than any other has misled man's 
search, and has done more than any other to place and 
keep him in the world of the senses, in spite of spiritual 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 291 

and mental progress, a means within tlie reacli of all, 
clamoured for by all, and to be had in abundance by poor 
as well as rich, is alcohol. 

In his profound work. The Arts of Intoxication (London, Dr. Crane on 
1877), the Rev. Dr. Crane says- ^ ^ ^.^ ^ . 2L1*,1. 

" He that gave our nature its depths did not design 
that those depths should be stirred by trifles. He gave 
them, not for luxury, but for utility in the great aim and 
work of life. He never intended that the deepest, richest 
tones of our nature should be evoked by every careless 
touch of the keys. Human wants, human affections, the 
demands which belong to time, and the infinite motives 
which come to us from the eternal world are all designed 
to touch each its appropriate spring. The exalted enjoy- 
ments of devotion should be richer, sweeter to our souls a 
thousandfold than all worldly success or worldly pleasure. 
And every right affection, every rational hope and desire, 
is meant to be a motive power, and, according to its value, 
to stir the heart and breathe into the soul inspirations which 
lend light to the eyes, make the cheek glow, send the blood 
bounding along its channels. . . . Man has made a fearful True ex- 
discovery, not how to produce, but how to imitate these ci*unterfeited 
true exaltations. He has learned how to counterfeit the by the 
golden coin with which Grod pays the worthy labourer, excitement 
It has been discovered that certain poisonous drugs, of alcohol, 
differing in the kind and degree of their effects, are potent 
to lay a spell upon soul and body ; and, while every mental 
faculty is unhinged, and every physical power is benumbed, 
and the whole being rendered helpless and degraded, the 
abused body may lie steeped in sensuous enjoyment, and 
the abused mind be cheated wdth a seeming consciousness 
of unwonted activity and augmented force and brilliancy. 
And men have learned to covet the fleeting unnatural 
pleasures. For the sake of an hour of such fevered dreams 
man is willing to face the horrors of a return to realities 
which his guilty pleasures have despoiled of honour, peace, 
and virtue ; is ready to pay the price of days of lassitude 
and gloom, and even of pain, remorse, and death." 

Self-deception, then, has made man miss happiness — Man's seif- 
the happiness of the perfectly harmonious individual has^made 
being and of the perfectly harmonized community of beings i^i™ miss 
into which it was intended he should develop, and, Iby afffouS 



292 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



In religion. 



In science. 



An illustra- 
tion of this. 



circumscribing him to the partial world of tlie senses, has 
made him miss the truth at every turn, in religion no less 
than in science. 

In religion it has made him manufacture a God and a 
scheme of salvation by which he escapes all responsibility 
for his own being and doing. In science it has made him 
insist that the senses bound the entire world of scientific 
research and possibility ; that what cannot be demonstrated 
by or to the senses has no existence ; while, by the 
abnormal disproportionate development of the senses, the 
clue they might afford in a state of perfect balance with 
the other powers is lost. 

For example, let us imagine that a man has grown up 
without physical action ; that he has for years been sitting 
in an artificial frame, which has locked all his muscles in 
perfect stillness, with the exception of his ankles and feet ; 
that these have done all the motion, all the living, for the 
whole system, even to his having been fed through them 
by the process of cutaneous absorption ; that, in this way, 
though having originally all the component parts of feet, 
they have lost all resemblance to feet as we see them 
in the healthy human frame ; are distorted, unsightly, 
monstrous, incapable of bearing him up, their very size 
being part of their weakness for all the natural purposes 
of feet. 

The head of this man is but a little knob, his frame 
puny and shrunken, he lacks all that ranks him with 
normal man, he lives only in his feet. If he were to be 
mufiBed and covered, so that all of him but his feet were 
entirely hidden, and a physiologist should then be called 
in to say, without help of any explanation, what the two 
objects were and to what manner of creature they belonged, 
he would be quite excusable if he did not know them 
as feet, or if, guessing so far correctly, he constructed 
anything but a man for the rest of the creature ! 

Change the picture and transfer the developmental 
excess to any other member, or organ, or set of functions ; 
the result must always be equally false to nature and 
truth, because equally out of balance with them. The fault 
is not with the parts or powers excessively developed, nor 
with those lying arbitrarily dormant ; it lies in the false 
method, the spurious process producing these. 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 293 

Just as tlie framed man's feet lost all tlie fine inter- wTi^thappi- 
flowing curves, the subtle, complex elasticities wliich lend g^ss ^s and^ 
themselves to the miracle of walking, so the spirit and the can be found. 
mind of man, chained down to the special development of 
the senses — which should only know themselves through 
his controlling and aspiring consciousness of their real 
purposes — have been excluded from the realization of the 
exquisite happiness which God Himself cannot bestow 
until His child can conceive it ; and of which man only 
first conceives when first he seeks the happiness of his 
kind, and learns that by this path only comes happiness 
to meet himself ; and, in learning this, learns also not to 
seek it for its own sake, even though by the right way of 
first securing it to others, but to seek it for the sake of 
that blessing to others, by which it comes. 

How is this proven ? 

Because when we seek happiness in this way we have 
it, serene, uncloyiEg, rich, satisfying, constant, and this 
though we have nothing else that men call pleasant and 
good ; while, on the other hand, in the height of physical, 
sensuous self-gratification, we are always conscious of the 
gnawing of for ever unsatisfied desire at the core of life, of 
vague yet deep disappointment and emptiness, and thus 
the goad of endless craving follows the ever- artificial 
supply. 

And hence, with all our apparent advancement, we are 
to this day still writhing in fratricidal strife at the feet of 
insatiable false gods, and as man sought alcohol first for 
pleasure, thinking it happiness, so now we, wiser, but, 
alas ! not stronger, drink to forget, and if we can to dream, 
instead of to know ; for drink has proven like the iron 
frame which has suffered only the feet to grow. 

§ 70. The first cause of the hold alcohol has obtained Suppie- 
upon man being that, in mistaking the gratification of the ™uses7ex- 
senses for the happiness he was born to seek and realize, plaining the 
he mistook alcohol for its great agent ; the next, or alcohol has 
supplementary causes — constitutino; very formidable rein- obtained 

n O c/ over I113.D" 

for cements — may be classed as follows : — (a) the physical, kind. 
(6) the psychical ; the first relating to food and various 
luxurious indulgences, notably, the use of tobacco. 

It is a generally recognized fact that what is called "high 
living," the use of highly spiced dishes, and the whole 



2M 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The force of 
example 
because of 
the sym- 
pathetic 
unity of the 
race. 



Plutarch on 
the force of 
association. 



range of epicurean habits provoke a desire for alcoholic 
liquors. This is largely due to the vitiation of taste and 
appetite, which sensuality in any of its forms must- 
inevitably produce, and unnatural feeding not only vitiates 
the taste, but by imposing too much labour on the 
stomach prompts it to call for irritant ; and tobacco, 
although it acts to a certain extent as a counterpoison to 
alcohol, creates by its vitiation of both taste and smell, a 
demand for stronger tasting and stronger smelling foods, 
and these, again, because of their indigestible character, 
call for an excitation of more than the natural supply of 
the gastric fluids ; and thus it is seen that in the physical, 
as in the mental sphere of life, one wrong begets another, 
and all are linked in various circles that, like the lessening 
walls of the " Iron Shroud," press closer and closer until 
the victim is crushed. 

The psychical causes may be divided into — (1) The 
force of example, because of the sympathetic unity of the 
race ; (2) the force of habit, because of natural laws ; 
(3) the force of hereditary habit ; (4) the force of habit 
become instinct ; (5) the force of habit-formed instinct 
become nature in a depraved sense. 

The fact that humanity has a common basis of under- 
standing — if only that of signs — indicates a common 
bond stretching along the whole line of hnman con- 
sciousness. The reality of this bond is manifested in 
the tremendous power which example, habit, and custom 
have over us, and God's purpose in this bond is seen in 
the impossibility it creates, for man's happily and pros- 
perously ignoring — either as individual, community, or 
nation — the divine command to love our neighbour as 
ourself. 

The force of example is tersely expressed in Plutarch's 
words : " If you associate with a cripple you will soon 
learn to limp yourself," and in the popular proverb, " One 
is known by the company he keeps." 

That this teaching can be abused ; that it can be 
cunningly turned into a defence for the grossest selfish- 
ness ; can be made to bear false witness against Plutarch 
as one who would have unfortunates and victims generally 
abandoned to their fate ; can be made to serve as justification 
for never approaching the fallen and depraved — and, in a 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 295 

word, to make mercy and com.passion intraders among the 
human virtues — does not affect its true force of warning 
against the kind of association an^d sympathy which de- 
presses and weakens the sympathizer without cheering or 
benefiting the sufferer, while it does help to further j^ro- 
nounce the fact that sympathy, whether conscious or un- 
conscious, sensible or sentimental, unselfish or self-seeking, 
does powerfully, variously, and constantly affect our 
development. AH progress hangs upon it, because only 
by this bond do we have to do with one another. 

Were we separate — that is, insulated entities — we could 
not co-operate, we could not learn or profit from each 
other's mistakes or successes, we should not really be 
living in any sense in which as sympathetic beings we 
conceive of life. 

Thomas Tryon, in his work On tJie Method of Educating 
Children (London, 1695), says of the force of example, 
■" The Fear of God, Temperance, Cleanliness, and Frugality, 
are taught by precept and example, even as Arts and 
Sciences are. ... If the Children see no disorderly nor 
intemperate Examples, but have the Representation and 
Character of the contrary Virtues continually placed before 
their Eyes, they will undoubtedly conform themselves to 
that Image." 

In his Commentaries on Tobacco (Sydney, 1853), T. T. Campbell 
Campbell says, " The habitual intercourse of persons, fluJncVaud 
the communion of sentiments, unanimity of opinion, and effects of 
the silent underworking force of imitation conspire to tercoursem 
engender a sameness of ideas, a similitude of character daily Me. 
among members of the same group, and these, extending 
from groups to communities, cemented by the ties of 
common privileges, unity of interests, and a common 
attachment to place of birth, probably form the ground- 
work of all patriotism. 

"Imitation is an essentially active energy in the con- The force of 
stitution of man, and one of the elements of habit. In o^n^mr™ 
youth especially we copy something of every human action laws. 
or manner preseixted to our observation. It is in constant 
operation in every stage of life, and is so potent that 
persons living long together will insensibly acquire a 
mutual resemblance in some points, so that it may be said 
all society is a school of design, and every individual is a 



296 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Conscious 
and openly 
acknow- 
ledged 
effects. 



model for good or for evil to every other individual. Each 
takes his copy, too, with all the secrecy of profound uncon- 
sciousness, which enables the imitative faculty in man to 
operate on the mind with an energy so much the more 
sure and effective, engraining the lights and shades in 
the pattern of the moral copyright with almost indelible 
fixedness of colouring," 

And besides the power of example which thus pro- 
foundly affects without our being directly aware of it, there 
is its openly acknowledged force. " Why should I not 
drink ? " says the clergyman ; * " the canon, the vicar, the 
bishop, drink. What they do, surely I may." "And as 
for me," says the common soldier, " I don't pretend to be 
better or wiser than our general, colonel, captain ; they 
all take their glass like gentlemen, why not I ? " " The 
master has his wines," says the working man, "why 



* The Daily Telegraph (April 24, 1883) thus pertinently com- 
ments on the cases of Captain Robinson and the clergyman's son 
Beaumont : — 

"John Joseph Beaumont's story is sad. Already, at twenty-six 
years, he is said, by his drunken habits, to have ruined his father, a 
clergyman of the Establishment, and forced him to resign a com- 
fortable living. Appointed to a small ofl&ce in the Inland Eevenne, 
Beaumont was turned away because of his habitual insobriety ; and 
now he passes his time between delirium tremens out of doors and 
convalescence in St. Pancras Workhouse. The law of to-day, unlike 
that of the past, does not recognize destitution, from whatever cause, 
as a punishable offence, and he is now at liberty to go on ruining his 
relations — provided that field be not already closed to his enterprise 
— contracting delirium tremens, and knocking for admission ai the 
workhouse door, until, failing reformation, death cuts short his 
disgraceful career. Why men like Captain Robertson and Mr, 
Beaumont help to swell the score of life's failures is a mystery beyond 
solution (?). Both are apparently well-bred; both are more than 
ordinarily well-educated. They had chances given them. The ball 
was at their feet. Poets and publicists point to the examples of 
what are called self-made men as being wonderful. We hear of 
lads born in thatched cottages, and brought up at the plough's tail, 
yet pressing through to the front, seizing upon the prizes of life, and 
becoming wealthy in the mart, or renowned at the bar, in the senate, 
and the councils of the State. In point of fact, such thrice-ennobled 
representatives of the Peerage of Genius are natural products of 
civilized society. We are to watch for their advent and greet them 
with applause. Yet not they, hut the weeds and wasters, the hrolien 
captains and drunken pauper scholars, are the more truly remarkable 
phenomena of an age like ours." 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 297 

shouldn't we have a glass of beer too ? " " Don't preacli 
to me," says the young man; "my father takes wine at 
dinner always, so did my professors at college. I don't 
care to be better than they." 

In the Sword and Trowel (London, April, 1884), Mr. 
Spnrgeon says — • 

" Children are taught to drink, encouraged to drink, 
and praised for drinking ; the glass is even made a reward 
for good conduct. It will be little wonder if they grow 
up to equal and surpass their seniors, when precept and 
example are pointed by contemptuous jests aimed at 
abstainers. We have heard Christian people declare that 
if their children acquired a taste for strong drink it should 
be in after life, but they would not bear the responsibility 
of training them in it ; and we have thought this to be 
true common sense. Bat what is that spirit which leads 
a professed believer in Christ to put the bottle to his 
neighbour's mouth, nay, to his child's mouth? What is 
that spirit which has induced some to trample upon the 
scruples of the little one, and exclaim in anger, ' I will 
have none of such nonsense. Are you going to teach your 
parents, and set up to be better than they ? ' Thousands 
of boys are the victims of Bacchus, for their fathers train 
them to take their share of beer ; this is mostly among the 
working classes ; but are there not too many in all ranks 
of society who in other shapes offer their children upon 
the altar of the fiery fiend ? Let the careful parent think 
this matter over before he further countenances wine at 
juvenile parties, or at holiday festivals. It may seem a 
trifle, . . . but when the son becomes a sot, it will afford 
his father no pleasure to remember that he told him to 
' stick to his beer,' or taught him how to know a glass 
of fine old port." 

And thus both hereditary and acquired desires and 
habits are propped by the example of those whom we love 
and respect. And this propping is not materially weakened 
by the knowledge that bishops, generals,* gentlemen, and 
the sons of gentlemen have sometimes degenerated to the 

* "For fifty years I have been in Her Majesty's service, and I do 
not hesitate to say that some of the brightest ornaments of the service 
have gone down and been degraded by drink." — Yice-Admiral Sir 
William King Hall, Speech, London, May, 1879. 



298 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



We never 
see our own 
personal 
danger. 



Dr. Chan- 
ning would 
have the 
wealthy 
classes set 
the example 
of abstinence. 



The force of 
hereditary- 
habit. 



ranks of habitual drunkards, because the inciting power of 
example (one of the most awful of our personal respon- 
sibilities to one another) — that which influences us in the 
way we want to go — is always more potent than its restrain- ' 
ing force, which is likely to require some sacrifice of' us ! 

And it is certain that young people are in this matter 
peculiarly victims to the force of example, because in 
youth the imitative faculty is most susceptible, and they 
follow example blindly from their childlike confidence in 
those who set it ; not as, later, to find protection and 
support in practices which they have learned are, at best, 
questionable. 

Then, too, in his own individual case man always sees 
real drunkenness, degradation, delirium tremens — just as 
he sees violent accident or death — as things possible, but 
dim, far off, not coming to him, though happening all round 
to others ! 

" What is the example the more prosperous classes set 
to the poorer ? " says the Rev. Dr. William Ellery Channing. 
" Not that of self-denial, spirituality, of the great Christian 
truth that human happiness lies in the triumph of the 
mind over the body, in inward force and life. 

" The great inquiry which the poor man hears among 
those whose condition makes them his superiors, is — ' what 
shall we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
clothed ? ' Unceasing struggles for outward, earthly, 
sensual good constitute the chief activity he sees around 
him. To suppose that the poorer classes should receive 
lessons in luxury and indulgence from the more prosperous, 
and should yet resist the temptations to excess, is to expect 
from them a moral force in which we feel ourselves to be 
sadly wanting." * 

§ 71. We know that by repeating an act or thought 
-until it has become spontaneous and as unconscious and 
involuntary as our breathing, we have formed such thought 
and action into habit, and habit is a part of human 
development in which more watchfulness is needed than 
in any other. 

Habit is formed so easily — the force of example, every- 
where, directly and indirectly influencing it — and forms by 

* Evil of Intemperance (Boston, 1837). 



OEIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 299 

gradations that glide upon one another so imperceptibly, 
that we are not only in its toils before we know it, but 
often without knowing it at all, and it is not only the 
strongest chain we forge around our own activity and 
influences, but among the most binding tendencies we 
transmit to our children. 

And when to its force by inheritance is added the 
powerful weight of sympathetic association — for our habits 
gravitate us to those of like habits — it is little wonder 
that the growing generation copies the faults and follies 
of the passing one, even when benefiting by some of its 
experience and research. For, as we have seen, the race 
development has, after all, thus far been so predominantly 
that of the senses, that great as have been its strides in 
purely intellectual and speculative fields, the growing, like 
the passing generation, and even in an intensified degree, 
is still chiefly bound up in investigations and experiments 
whose end is pleasurable — the gratification of self and the 
sfenses — in every imaginable form. 

It seems a question whether the great mental advance- 
ment of the race has not been in directions and of a nature 
to prevent moral impulse, or at least check the best work 
of reflection ; whether we have not had moral analysis 
satisfied with its analytic power, rather than moral purpose 
profiting seriously by moral analysis ; so that intellectual 
progress and abnormal development of the senses have 
helplessly followed parallel lines, waiting for the moral 
and spiritual powers of man to biend them together and 
initiate a new habit of being in which all man's powers 
should grow into their normal relative proportions. 

Concerning the force of evil habit, the great Danish Soren Kirke- 
thinker Soren Kirkegaard (Kjaerlighedens Gerninger, or |Jc?ofevir 
The Worlcs of Love, Copenhagen, 1847) says — habits. 

" Of all our enemies habit is perhaps the slyest, and 
above everything is she sly enough never to let herself 
be seen, for he who saw her would be saved from her. 
Against the visible enemy we fight in self-defence ; but 
habit is like the soft, yet ferocious vampire that steals on 
the sleeper, and, ivhile sucking his blood, coolingly moves 
its noiseless wings that his sleep may be the deeper. But 
the vampire finds its prey among the sleeping, it lacks 
power to lull the wakeful, while habit can creep sleep- 



300 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

givingly over tliose who are awake, and do its vampire 
work in slumber of its own producing." 
The force of And when habit has thus stolen upon us, it transforms 

instincr^™^ the whole being so as to harmonize it with the habit dr 
habits formed. The force of example and inherited 
tendencies make individual habits into national character- 
istics, and thus countries are ruled by the habitudes of 
preceding epochs, by routine government, by national pre- 
judices, as well as by national ignorance and blindness to 
DifGcuityfor the most Crying vices. Just as the individual finds it 
fOT tbe^iif-^ difficult to change any objectionable habit, because it has 
dividual to become so natural that he does it before he thinks, or even 
chains of without thinking, so must it also be difficult for the nation 
habit. a;n(j ii^Q race to change national customs and habits im- 

bedded by the lapse of centuries ; or even to take full note 
of their power and tendency. 

For example, the crime of murder, except among Thugs, 
Assassins, the Vehmgericht, or during frenzied religious 
or political upheavals, is generally abhorred and con- 
demned, and punished by the death penalty. 

But the institutions, habits, and customs which are 
responsible for nine-tenths of the murders, are neither 
generally condemned nor abrogated; but are eagerly de- 
fended and approved by most of those who wish to do — 
and think they are doing — their parts as patriots and 
citizens of a free country, in opposing interference with 
the time-honoured rights and privileges of the liquor 
trade. 

They know that liquor does an incredible amount of 
wrong to the individual and to the nation. But habit — 
the habit of inactivity in the matter, and the habit of 
long participation in those social customs and commercial 
interests which help to sustain the liquor trade — these 
hold them off, and they intrench themselves in their non- 
interference by all sorts of specious reasoning. 

So great, indeed, is the power of ingrained habit, that 

although evil, and passively recognized as such, it is strong 

enough to transform the whole state and social organization 

into accordance with it. 

Difficulty of The tremendous power of custom and habit is almost 

soJiaTreia*^"^ daily felt by those interested in temperance reform, in the 

tions in difficulty of deciding what is the right and wisest course 



ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 301 

to pursue in social relations. We know that alcohol is harmony 
poison; in offering it to a guest we offer him not only ^l^^^'^i 
what is certainly non-beneficial, but what is, in some more convictions. 
or less degree, positively deleterious- — even were the con- 
sideration solely that of physical health. 

But, in addition to this, we know that we may be 
starting him on the road to perdition; for conscience, 
self-control, moral dignity and purpose are not equally 
dispensed in the moral constitutions of men, and the 
exterior, with all its subtle indications, by no means surely 
informs of the weakuess or strength of a given in- 
dividuality. 

Yet the circumstances we are placed in by the drinking 
customs of the country make it almost impossible for us 
to act with our highest convictions, or even to feel sure 
whether it would be best to do so at the present stage of 
affairs. It is not well that temperance, or any cause bear- 
ing the banner of reform, should be characterized by 
narrowness, bigotry, iconoclastic prejudices, and vain- 
glorious self-assertion and intolerance. Yet social drink 
customs, associated as they are among the upper classes 
with lavish hospitality and the most pleasing graces and 
refinements of Hfe, have often the effect of forcing the 
appearance of this invidious contrast upon the temperance 
movement ; and the whole force of habit weighs as yet on 
the side of the drink customs. 

These originated at the top of the ladder wdth the The great 
royal prerogative and the Court, from the days when great buSy'resting 
drinking capacity was thought to be one measure of fitness JJ,^J^g^f^ 
for occupancy of the throne ; and came thence gradually this respect, 
down through the various grades of society into universal 
practice. 

If the Court, recognizing its responsibility for this evil, 
would take the lead and set the example in reform, the 
most formidable of the hindrances to reform — the drink 
customs — could and would be easily overcome. 

Another and most important instance of the strength 
of rooted, ingrained habit was furnished last year (1883) 
at the Canterbury Convocations, when the question of 
using intoxicating wine at the Lord's Supper came up for 
verdict before the ecclesiastical tribunal. After due con- 
sideration, the prelates of the Church of England found 



302 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. John 
Sebright on 
instinct. 



Mr. Herbert 
Spencer on 
the same. 



it most " convenient that the clergy should conform to 
ancient and unbroken usage." Placed in the gravest 
dilemma they evidently felt it might be wiser not to 
countenance an innovation, lest, for complicated reasons, 
the harm ensuing should be greater than the good. 

It is scarcely possible to suppose that the majority 
among them do not believe that alcohol — now known to 
be a poison — is out of place at the Lord's Supper, yet, such 
are the difficulties accumulating through the force of 
habit and precedent around such a question, the verdict 
given is by no means incompatible with such a conviction.* 

If the drink evil was not in our very midst, if, like the 
slave trade for example, it was flourishing in far distant 
lands, what would England think of its results, and her 
responsibilities concerning them, then ? 

The foreigner who first sojourns in England, in London, 
Liverpool, or Glasgow, shudders at the scenes in the streets 
of these cities. After remaining a year or two, he becomes 
accustomed to them, and in a measure callous, though 
never ceasing to feel shocked at the effect that has been 
produced upon the children — the well-born, well-bred boys 
and girls — who only on their way to school have seen and 
heard enough before they are twelve years old to make 
them familiar with and indifferent to spectacles of drunken- 
ness and sensuality in some of their lowest forms. Habit 
long pursued and transmitted becomes instinct, and at last, 
in a depraved sense, natural. 

Mr. John Sebright, in his Observations upon Instinct 
(London, 1836), expresses an opinion that "the greater 
part of the propensities that are generally supposed to be 
instinctive are not implanted in animals by nature, but are 
the result of long experience, acquired and accumulated 
through many generations, so as in the course of time to 
assume the character of instinct." 

In a letter to the Athenoeum (London, April 5, 1884), 
Mr. Herbert Spencer quotes from his Principles of 
Psychology (edition of 1855) : " On the one hand. Instinct 
may be regarded as a kind of organized memory ; on the 
other hand, Memory may be regarded as a kind of incipient 
instinct. Memory, then, pertains to all that class of 
psychical states which are in process of being organized. 
* See chapter xiii. 



OEIGIN AND CAUSES OF ALCOHOLISM. 303 

It continues so long as the organizing of them continues ; 
and disappears when the organization of them is complete. 
In the advance of the correspondence, each more complex 
class of phenomena which the organism acquires the power 
of recognizing, is responded to at first irregularly and un- 
certainly ; and there is then a weak remembrance of the 
relations. By multiplication of experiences, this remem- 
brance becomes stronger, and the response more certain. 
By further multiplication of experiences, the internal 
relations are at last automatically organized in corre- 
spondence with the external ones ; and so conscious 
memory passes into unconscious or organic memory." 

Mr. Shirley Hibberd, in an article, WJiat is Instinct ? Mr. Shirley 
{Intellectual Olserver, London, July, 1863), says that g^^^^^g?^ 
instinct is "the work of the mind rendered literally 
uniform by habit . . . but no matter how strong the force 
of habit, if initially it is the result of an act of reasoning 
and the expression of a motive, and is followed for a 
purpose, then it can never be separated from mind, 
though when the habit is fixed it makes little or no 
demand upon the mind until some exigency arises demand- 
incr a deviation from habitual rule." 

In his essay on Instinct (Encyclopcedia Britannica, new 
ed. vol. xiii.). Prof. J. J. Romanes sajs — 

"By the effects of habit in successive generations. The force of 
mental activities which were originally intelligent, become liJthicrS-^ 
as if they were stereotyped into permanent instinct. coming 

"Just as in the lifetime of the individual, adaptive depraved* 
actions which were originally intelligent, may, by frequent sense. 
repetitions, become automatic ; so in the lifetime of the 
species, actions originally intelligent may, by frequent 
repetition and heredity, so write their effects on the 
nervous system that the latter is prepared, even before 
individual experience, to perform adaptive actions mechani- 
cally, which in previous generations were performed 
intelligently — called 'lapsing of intelligence.' We find 
good evidence that new or changed experience, when con- 
tinued over a number of generations, is bequeathed to 
future generations as a legacy of intuitive knowledge." 

These definitions and analyses of habit and instinct 
point to two of the most solemn and important facts of 
human evolution : that of the present impossibility of 



304 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

conscientiously accepting the leading of our instincts, 
except after uncompromising scrutiny ; and that of the 
paramount obligation to try ourselves and our instincts by 
tests of self-renunciation, combined with unflinching, con- 
stant, and large consideration for others; for we know 
ourselves to have gone so far on the wrong way that we 
cannot decide what is natural or true merely by the 
guidance of feelings and instincts which are in themselves 
so much the product of our wrong-going. And therefore, 
even when a man says of alcohol that he " knows it is 
good for him," that "it agrees with him," his assertions, 
if sincere — and such assertions often are — only prove how 
thoroughly vitiated his system and its demands have 
become. 



The current saying that " History repeats itself " is a 

puerile complaint and a querulous pretence. It is the 

favourite epigram of our effete spirits, ever making the 

same weary round within a circle of our own drawing, 

till there is little power for searching or soaring beyond. 

While we persist as a race in a life of selfishness and 

sensual indulgence, no intellectual advance alone can set 

us free, or release History from her painful task of noting 

our gyrations from and to the same old points of departure. 

wSSgto I^ ^ child will not learn its lesson, the teacher cannot 

say some- advance it to the next room. The teacher can only explain 

mg new. ^^^j, ^^^^ ^^^^ again. If the child is content to be ignorant, 

or unwilling to take the trouble of learning, we are not 

surprised when he complains — " I'm tired of hearing that 

old lesson over and over. T can't learn it ; I won't learn 

it ; there'll be more just like it if I do ! I don't believe 

. there is any next room ! " 

History repeats itself only so long as we make it 
necessary to the learning of our lesson. She will say 
something new, something grander than all that has gone 
before, as soon as we will let her. 



CHAPTER XII. 

SPECIOUS EEASONINGS CONCERXING THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 

" Temperance is the unyielding control of reason over lust, and. 
over all wrong tendencies of the mind. Temperance means not only 
frugality, but also modesty and self-government. It means abstinence 
from all things not good and entirely innocent in their character." * — 

CiCEEO. 

§ 72. Just as alcoliol, by its imperceptible action in filtrating Similarity of 
poison throughout generation after generation of the body, body^.poison- 
has poisoned the race, so the arguments in favour of its i"? j*"*^ 
■use, in filtrating their poison through the public mind poisoning. 
from generation to generation, have shackled the reason, 
judgment, and conscience, which would have succumbed 
to no open and sudden onset, however formidable. 

As falsehood is dangerous in the degree that it is mixed 
with truth, so specious reasoning regarding drink is the of half 
more dangerous in the degree that its warp is crossed with truths. 
threads of religious, social, moral, and political truths. 

Specious reasoning, always plausible and usually 
clever, never strains popular comprehension or interpre- 
tation, and seldom exacts profound thought. It wears a 
mask of truth, under which it moves its features so in- 
geniously that we scarcely suspect the mask. It appeals 
to selfishness, calling it good nature; it incites false 
honour, calling it consideration and tact ; it flatters false 
liberty, calling it individuality and self-respect.f 

* For a voluminous and excellent compendium of authorities on 
the true meaning of the word temperance, see The Morals of Temper- 
ance, chap, i., in Dr. F. R. Lees' Temperance Text.Book (vol. i. 
London, 1884). 

t " Invocation : Let us invoke all the powers on earth and under 

X 



o06 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

The two con- There are two conditions in whicli a man will admit 

which^man ^^^^ ^^ ^® ®^il ' firsfc, before he has ever committed or 

win admit expected to commit it ; last, when he has steeped himself 

^^a evi 18 1^ ^^ ^^ deeply, that there is neither sbame nor hope enough* 

left to tempt him to lie about it. On the down grade you 

will not get the truth from him, he will not tell it even 

to himself. 

So the man who does not drink, and the sot, will alike 
tell you that drinking is a degradation and a curse, but the 
moderate drinker, of all grades of moderation, defends the 
habit tenaciously ; at one point, or at another, wherever 
yoii attack, you find him there, and in whatever shape best 
opposes or neutralizes your attack. 



Hyper-sensi- The ingenious reasonings and arguments which have 
vWuautya ^ccn wovcn around the habit of drink by those who love 
greatobstacie it, and who wish the justification of plenty of company in 
ofperewiS itj ^^6 very diflicult to deal with. They are so much a 
reform. matter of personal opinion, of mutual influence, of tbe 

rooted love of pleasure curiously mixed with the desire to 

the earth for the whole state of the British Distillery. And let ns 
implore the aid and assistance of those Immortal Shades who dared 
to rival the Lord of Heaven, and are invested with the Power of the 
Air, by which they go to and fro upon the Earth to deceive and 
seduce Mankind : That there may never be wanting arguments to 
delude, nor bribes to corrupt." — An Oration delivered before an Audience 
of Distillers, hy Baahehuh (London, 1760). 

In the Pail Mall Gazette (April 5, 1884) I find the following :— 

"proposal foe a mission to start a public-house. 

" The Bishop of Bedford presided on Thursday night at a meeting 
in the board-room of the S.P.C.K. office, at which were present 
the Eight Hon. Sir J. R. Mowbray, M.P., Mr. J. G. Talbot, M.P., the 
Warden of All Souls and Keble, Canon Scott-Hilliard, and other 
friends of the proposed movement for Oxford men working in the 
East End of London ; and it was proposed to place an ' Oxford 
House' in the parish of St. Andrew, Bethnal Green, of which the 
Rev. Knight Bruce was in charge. Mr. Albert Pell, M.P., suggested 
the propriety of the Oxonians buying a public-house. He said that 
he should be happy to lease them one. He was not joking. A 
publican could get at as many people as a person could reach. They 
could take this house and insist that it should he conducted so that a 
man could talie his wife and children into it without the ears of the 
women being hurt, and if there was a little drunkenness, that loas not 
the greatest crime in the ivorld, though people often spoke as if it 
■were." 



SPECIOUS KEASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 307 

be considered conscientious, and with some real impulses 
to do right ; and the whole sophistical mesh is so plausible 
and subtle (resulting from long inheritance of drink habit, 
drink custom, and drink sophistry, so that the selfishness 
is well concealed even from the sophist himself), and so 
personal, that the first outwork the reform^er encounters — 
or he who seeks help to be self-reforming— is that of 
hyper-sensitive individuality. 

Then there are the myriads of onlookers, intelligent it is not only 
people, who are not quick or clever reasoners, but who deceiVedfbut 
sincerely search for, though they cannot argue about the for the 
truth ; people who respect themselves and abhor debauchery, seai-chers and 
who, meaning neither to deceiye nor be deceived, are ^^^ ignorant 
balancing this important question of moderate drinking — win in this 
of drinking at all, with the intention of discovering ^°°^ ^^ 
whether moderate indulgence is harmless in itself, and 
whether it has a tendency to become immoderate. It is 
also for these and their heirs for ever that victory in this 
good struggle is to be won. And to win, it is not only 
necessary to unwind all specious arguments and leave the 
truth standing bare and clear ; it is necessary to do it in 
such a way that the masses will see that it is done, will be 
convinced. 

If every beer- shop and public-house were closed, every 
brewery and distillery destroyed, every bottle broken, and 
every drop of alcoholic drink spilled out of England into 
the ocean to-day, and no more of the same were admitted 
within its borders for a year and a day, England might see 
something of what abstinence could do, but she would not 
experience the effects of abstinence voluntarily imposed 
upon himself hy man, under the sincere conviction that in- 
toxicating drinks are evil. It is this that is wanted every- 
where, in every heart and life. Whether a little drink be 
hurtful or harmless, is not now, if it ever was, the question. 
What is wanted is the general diffusion of the knowledge The great 
that alcohol is a poison to body and mind; that, though general and 
the drinker 'may in his own person to all appearances positive 
escape baneful consequences, his children and children's on*the^sub- 
children must often hear them. What is wanted is the J^^*? ^nd 
conviction that no man can guiltlessly indulge in that recognition 
which, not heing a necessity for himself, is, by his in- ^^^^^^^^^^^ 
dulging, a snare to his brother. That drink is such a biiity. 



308 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



snare, is abnndantlj proved by tlie fact tliafc, wherever 
the custom of moderate drinking has been sanctioned by 
the community, there has always been a large number in 
that community to sink from moderation to excess. 



The fallacy 
of the boast 
that the 
virility of 
the English 
nation 
proves the 
comparative 
harmlessness 
of drink. 



Brief 

epitome of 
England's 
drink 
history. 



Bergenroth 
on the atti- 
tude of the 
Court con- 
cerning 
water-drink- 
ing in 1498. 



§ 73. In dealing with specious reasoning, we must 
remember that even fools can make assertions which, 
however groundless, a wise man will find it difficult to 
successfully gainsay, and thorough indeed must be the 
refutation of assertions made in the interests of self- 
indulgence. 

It is common in England (probably at present the 
hardest drinking country in the world) to hear the 
defenders of drink boast that the virility and might of 
the English nation proves the outcry against alcohol to be 
greatly exaggerated, if not unfounded. 

Many peculiar local and historic circumstances (such, 
for instance, as the insular position which has often com- 
paratively sheltered England from the commotions and 
anxieties of the continental Powers), combined with prudent 
and vigorous statesmanship, have mightily contributed to 
the foundation and maintenance of England's present 
power, but we may be certain that the comparative sobriety 
of the English race has done more. For however strong 
the hold of this vice in the present, it is a fact that the 
English as a nation have not been hard drinkers more 
than about two hundred years, which can be said of no 
continental nation. 

Beers and the use of hops became known in England 
during the sixteenth century ; before that time, the 
favourite drink of the people was ale and mead, the 
substitute for hops being wormwood ; and at about the same 
time tea and coifee were beginning to come into general 
use, and acted modifyingly. 

It appears from State documents that as early as the 
fifteenth century, water, so far as the Court was concerned, 
was regarded as unfit to drink. 

Says Bergenroth, in his Calendar of State Papers (No. 
1156)— 

" The Spanish ambassador at the court of Henry YII., 
De Puebla Talavera, writes to Ferdinand and Isabella 
(July 17th, 1498) that the English queen, and Lady 



SPECIOUS REASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. S09 

Margaret, the king's mother, wisli that the young Princess 
Catherine of Arragon being affianced to the Prince of 
Wales (thougli still living in Spain) should accustom her- 
self to drink wine, since the water in England is not 
drinkable, and even if it were the climate would not allow 
the drinking of it." 

It was througk the marriage between the English, and 
French rojal houses that wine-drinking was first gradually- 
spread among the masses in England, by means of tlie 
consequent favourable tariff to the importation of wine. 
Before tkat time the masses did not generally drink ale, 
and what they did drink was ordinarily of a very ligkt 
character, and excessive drinking was rare. Says Camden citation 
(Annah, 1581)- ^™ en-. 

" The English, who hitherto had of all tlie IS'orthern Annais,i5si. 
nations shown themselves the least addicted to immoderate 
drinking, and been commended for their sobriety, first 
learned in these wars in the ITetherlands to swallow large 
quantities of intoxicating liquors, and destroy their own 
health by drinking that of others." 

In his curious work. The Government of Health (London, in 1595 Dr. 
1595), Dr. William Bullein says, " They that drinke wyne STin 
cusfcomably with measure, it doth profit them much and speaking of 
maketh good digestion; those people that use to drink evnfmakes 
wyne seldom times, be distempered . . . ale and beere no mention 
have no such virtue and goodness as wyne hath." He iiquor. 
does not mention distilled liquors, 

Mr. Sherlock, in his Shakespeare on Intemperance ^. .. 
(London, 1882), quotes from a section entitled The Plague the com- 
of our English Gentry, of the Gompleat Gentleman by Henry ^^an {1^22)'. 
Peacham (1622), the following: — 

" Within these fiftie or threescore yeares it was a rare 
thing with us to see a drunken man, our nation carrying 
the name of the most sober and temperate of any other in 
the world. But since we had to doe in the quarrell of the 
Netherlands, the custom of drinking and pledging healthes 
was brought over into England ; wherein let the Dutch be 
their owne judges, if we equall them not ; yea, I think 
rather excell them." 

In his well-known work. Way to Health, Long Life, From ^ 
and Happiness (1683), Tryon says that formerly canary Jj^eait^^^ 
(wine) was sold almost exclusively by apothecaries. Long Life, 



310 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



and Happi- 
ness (1683). 



Hard drink- 
ing not com- 
mon in 
England 
until the 
l7th century. 
Citation from 
Dr. Foe's 
Poor Man's 
Flea. 



From Sir 
John Har- 
rington's 

NugcB 
Antiquoe. 



From Bishop 
Benson in 
Lecky's 
History of 
England 
(1878). 



" Where there was one quart of wine drunk forty or fifty 
years ago (whicli would be about 1635) there is now ten 
thousand . . . the use of tobacco and brandy a hundred 
years since was hardly known. INTay, the use of our ale* 
and beer has hardly been above two hundred years." 
Which shows that hard drinking did not become common 
until the latter part of the seventeenth century. 

Concerning the condition brought about by the Act 
for Encouragement of Distillation, De Foe, in his Poor 
Mans Flea, says — 

" Drunkenness had become a science, and but that 
instruction in it proved so easy, and the youth too apt to 
learn, possibly we might have had a college erected for it 
before now." And of the evil example set by the nobility, 
he says, " Whoever gives himself the trouble to reflect 
on the custom of our gentlemen in their families en- 
couraging and promoting this vice of drunkenness among 
the poor, will not think it a scandal upon the gentry of 
England if we say that the mode of drinking that is now 
practised had its origin in the practice of the country 
gentlemen, and they again from the courts." 

Then came free trade in liquors during Queen Anne's 
reign. Sir John Harrington, in his Nugce Antiquoe, 
describing the Danish king Christian's visit to Queen 
Anne of England, says — 

" The Ig^dies have abandoned their sobriety, and are 
seen to roll about in intoxication. ... I see no man nor 
woman either that can now command himself or herself." 

The close of the eighteenth century saw little improve- 
ment on this state of affairs. In Lecky's History of Eng- 
land (1878) there is a graphic quotation from Bishop 
Benson, picturing the condition of England at that time. 

"Not only," says the bishop, "is there no safety of 
living in this town (London), but scarcely any in the 
country now. Robbery and murder are grown so frequent. 
Our people are become what they never before were — cruel 
and inhuman. Those cursed spirituous liquors, which to the 
shame of our Government are so easily to be had, and are 
in such quantities drunk, have changed the very nature of 
our people." 

Among the nobility and clergy, drinking has been 
more or less prevalent for about five hundred years, but 



SPECIOUS REASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 311 

the Englisli masses have been Lard drinkers for only a 
little over two hundred years, or about one hundred years 
less than any other nation, America excepted. Therefore 
the assertion that the strength of the English race is 
evidence that drink is not injurious, is seen to be fallacious. 



Rev. Dr. Dawson Burns, in his Christendom and the The Rev. Dr. 
Brink Curse (London, 1875), eloquently exposes specious Buras^onthe 
arguments of the character of evasion in these words: specious 

" _ . - , . . , arguments 

"Nothing can be more superficial, not to say sophistical, used to prove 
than the manner in which some literary men, who have ^fssionof™' 
no practical knowledge of the subject, endeavour to meet crime in eo- 
the force of this argument, whether used for abstinence or countries ^^ 
prohibition, by referring to countries comparatively sober Justifies the 

^ flSSUIDDtlOIl 

(such as Spain and some parts of the East) where crimes that drink is 
of great enormity are very common. Whatever may be the jJoJtoJ^^'jJ 
causes of such crimes there, they cannot prove that strong most of the 
drink is not at the bottom of two-thirds or three-fourths ^jJJedT™' 
of the crimes committed in the United Kingdom ; and to Great 
assume, as is done, that if the British causes were removed, ^^^*^^^- 
the foreign ones would take their place, is an outrage on 
common sense and knowledge of the world. Assuming 
the facts to be as stated, they do but show what no one 
ever doubted — that the causes of crime differ in different 
countries ; the reasonable inference being, that every 
country should seek to remove those causes of crime that 
are special to itself. Brigandage is rampant in some 
countries, and has its peculiar causes ; but what would be 
said by English writers if suitable means for the removal 
of those causes were opposed on the ground that drinking 
is the principal cause of crime in Great Britain ? Equally 
ridiculous is the plea that because some sober countries 
are snbject to crime from peculiar causes, therefore British 
crime is not owing to strong drink, or that the sum of it 
would remain as before, if drinking were abolished, all 
evidence and internal probability to the contrary notwith- 
standing. It may at the same time be doubted whether 
the countries credited with this remarkable sobriety deserve 
the praise, or at least whether the crimes committed there 
are not largely due to the use of intoxicants by the 
criminal part of the population. It was so during the 



312 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Indian Mutiny, when the sepoys, guilty of the worst 
atrocities, were made mad with bhang and arrack. It 
was so during the Communist rule in Paris, and the later 
outrages of the Spanish revolutionists. And in Eastern 
countries crime will be chiefly found to prevail among the 
classes that do not comply with the rules of sobriety, while 
those classes of the population free from drinking are 
strikingly free from other offences. So it is in Turkey, 
and so in India. It ought not to require much reasoning- 
capacity to perceive that the absence of intoxicating 
liquors must be favourable to the decrease of crime, and 
that whatever may be the amount of crime where they are 
unknown, their use would lead to an aggravation and an 
increase." 



Habitual 
drunkenness 
universally 
condemned. 

Moderate 
drinking the 
nucleus of 
dispute. 



No fixed 
standard of 
moderation 
possible. 



Dr. John 
Cheyne. 



Fourteen 
glasses of 
wine per day 
the modera- 
tion limit of 
a German 
temperance 
society in 
the sixteenth 
century. 
In our day, 



§ 74. All sensible people think alike on one feature of 
the drink question : they agree in condemning habitual 
drunkenness and sottishness as repulsive and contemptible. 

But on the question of so-called " moderate " drinking 
there is almost as much divergence of opinion as there is 
latitude of interpretation. 

The first thing would be to ascertain the standard of 
moderation ; but no standard has yet been fixed, no 
definition of the term been settled upon. Nor, indeed, 
would it be possible to do so from the physiological stand- 
point ; for while a single glass may produce drunkenness 
in one man, another man might drink ten glasses and 
show no signs of intoxication. 

" They who have heard how large a quantity of fer- 
mented liquor may sometimes be taken without injury," 
says Dr. John Cheyne, in A Letter on the Effects of Wine 
and Spirits (Dublin, 1829), "ought also to know how 
small a quantity may prove injurious, otherwise the 
question at issue has not been fairly submitted to their 
judgment." 

In Germany, in the sixteenth century, a temperance 
society based its laws on the restriction of its members to 
^'^ fourteen glasses of wine daily.''' In our day observation 
shows that " moderation " means just as little as a man 
chooses to drink, and also just as much as he chooses to 
drink short of the point of evident intoxication, nor is the 
line drawn even here by all, nor is there any one vested 



SPECIOUS KEASONIKGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 813 

with authority to say that the line shall be drawn any- moderation 

wVi prp entirely 

W^^^®- ^ ^ optional. 

On being asked to define the term, one man says, some of the 
" Moderation is to diink no more than yon know is ffood most usual 

„ , T • j_ 1 111 j_ definitions of 

for you, and never under any circumstances to exceed that the term. 
amount." Further questionicg elicits the fact that the 
quantity varies ; for example, his habit is to drink two or 
three glasses of wine or beer at dinner daily, and a glass of 
brandy now and then before going to bed ; in company, 
he is, of course, not so strict ; it would be disloyal, bigoted, 
unsocial, not to drink the health of the Qaeen, the Royal 
Family, and other toasts ; but he understands himself 
perfectly, and knows what he can bear ; he confesses to 
having sometimes been a little "jolly," but nothing worse, 
and he has only contempt for those who cannot thus con- 
trol themselves. 

This is a fair specimen of the moderate drinker's 
definition of the term. Another moderate drinker cannot 
tell you the quantity he takes. " I take a glass whenever 
I feel like it," he says, " but I always stop at the right 
point, and I don't frequent the public-house." Another 
claims moderation on the ground that he is never exactly 
" dead drunk," or that he is "only drunk now and then." 

"We are assured," says the Lancet, in an article, Are The Lancet 
Publicans the Enemies of Drunlienness ? (May, 1872) " that and^specious 
they (the publicans) regard this vice with a horror in no reasoning 
way second to the horror of teetotalers . , . from whom, moderation, 
indeed, they only differ in the opinion they have formed 
with regard to the best means of repressing the evil. 
Teetotalers would diminish drunkenness by enjoining 
abstinence from alcohol, . . . publicans, by enjoining 
moderation." As to the meaning of moderation, the 
Lancet says, " It is simply a matter of definition. A 
learned judge once said that a man was not drunk so long 
as he could lie on the ground without holding on ; to reel 
and stagger a little, to use foul language to decent people, 
... to squander the earnings that should support a ■ 
family, and gently punch the head of the partner of one's 
joys and cares ; ... to do all this when under the influence 
of drugged beer is not to be drunk, but only ' a little 
fresh.' " 

§ 75. Physicians, who should certainly be the highest 



314 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

authorities, very rarely attempt to define a fixed standard 

for moderation.* 
The practical But Bven if a moderation standard were theoretically 
neJs o/th'e found, its unattainability in practice at once becomes ap- 
P^^^ of . parent. 

moderation. ^ -r . . . i j? j. • t 

in chapter iv. some general tacts were given regarding 
the science of liquor adulteration and its prevalence, show- 
ing that, except in rare instances, all alcoholic liquors 
are, as a rule, adulterated. This fact alone makes the 
observance of any standard of moderation impossible to 
the majority. Bat even if alcoholic drinks were not often 
adulterated, the moderation standard would still to the 
vast majority of people remain utterly unattainable. It 
was shown in chapter v. that the relative harm done by 
. alcohol directly depends on a variety of more or less 
difficult, personal, and other circumstances and conditions ; 
such as constitution, temperament, climate, antecedents, 

* They sometimes attempt it, however. The late Dr. Anstie, for 
example, gave his standard of moderation in an issue of the Prac 
titioner (early in 1871), on which the Temperance Record commented 
as follows : — 

" This is the nearest approach that we have ever met to a defini- 
tion of the moderate use ot" alcohol, namely, not more than two ounces 
of alcohol in twenty-four hours for an adult man, and not more than 
three-fourths of an ounce for a woman. It would be a sad interrup- 
tion to the enjoyment of a convivial party if Dr. Anstie's standard of 
moderation were set up for its guidance. There would be, in the first 
place, the necessity of learning the amount of alcohol contained in 
the wine or other inebriating liquor placed before the guests ; and the 
size of the glasses would have to be made known, so that each person 
might understand how many glasses he or she might take without 
going beyond the bounds of moderation. And then, in the second 
place, there would be great difficulty in keeping to the right number 
of glasses. For alcohol, when taken into the stomach, so affects the 
nerves and brain as to make persons feel anxious for more of it. 
This constitutes its most dangerous property. It exhilarates, and it 
creates an alcoholic appetite which grows stronger by indulgence. It 
would be extremely difficult to keep to the standard. In fact, to 
propose to restrict or point out the quantity of alcoholic liquor which 
may be safely used, would be to acknowledge that the drink is, as 
the teetotalers assert, highly dangerous. It would be to make a dis- 
tinction between alcoholic liquors and all the other articles of food 
or drink that we use. The admirers of the liquors would naturally 
revolt at the idea of fixing a very narrow limit to the consumption of 
what they profess to consider the good creatures of God. We dispute 
the utility of attempts to set bounds to the consumption of brain= 



SPECIOUS KEASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 315 

occupation, conclifcion of tlie stomacli, etc., etc. It may be 
said tliat a skilfal plijsician would be able to make 
allowance for all these things. But this very fact proves 
that a general standard is out of the question. And, 
again, supposing these objections were the only ones, 
and that the medical profession had really reached this 
necessary proficiency, even then it would be only the rich 
who could practise moderation ! 

But even were a general standard for the individual 
approximately reached, there are considerations which 
would still make its observance practically impossible. 

In chapter v. it was seen how the harm produced by 
alcohol depends on (besides the conditions just enu- 
merated) the nature of the alcohols imbibed, and their 
relative saturation with water. 

Supposing, therefore, that the moderation quantum of 
alcohol could be fairly ascertained, it would still be im- 
possible to put the standard in practice, until every bottle 
of wine, whisky, brandy, gin, beer, ale, etc., should be 
scientifically tested, and the required saturation and 
character of the alcohol be thus ascertained or prepared. 

Thus it is seen that the term moderation, when applied 
to intoxicating liquors, has no value, because it has no 
reliable signification ; and that its chief use is to cover 
with the mantle of respectability as much as possible the 
varying grades of a habit bad from first to last, in what- 
ever degree it is indulged in. It is but fair in this 
connection to mention the fact that very many persons 
ranking among moderate drinkers both have and con- 
scientiously observe a fixed standard, and not only do not 
exceed its limits, but sincerely believe that within those 
limits the indulgence is harmless. 

But why, after all, should there be this search for a 
safe moderation dose ? If alcohol, while being the dan- 
gerous article we know that it is, had yet been found to 

poisoning drinks. Moderation may be theoretically right, but it is 
ever proving practically wrong. All the victims of intemperance 
began their use of stroug drink in moderate quantities, and the drink 
has made them what they are. The drink is truly a mocker ; men 
flatter themselves that they know how to guide themselves — they 
can distinguish the use from the abuse ; but they learn by painful 
experience that the drink is strong, while men are weak." 



316 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. Grindrod 
{Bacchus, 
1839) on 
moderate 
drinking as 
the pre- 
paratory- 
stage of 
drunken- 
ness. 



Dr. J. Baxter 
on moderate 
drinking. 



Dr. Copland 
on the same. 



be under certain conditions and in certain quantities 
essential to life and healtli ; then, indeed, would it become 
not only proper but an imperative necessity for us to find 
out the right way to use it. But it is proved and admitted 
by every one qualified to speak about it, and who values 
the truth, that alcohol is not necessary to either life or 
health ; that, on the contrary, neither are served by its 
use, in any quantity. Why, then, search for a standard 
of moderation for the use of a thing, at best quite valueless, 
and whose most probable effect is the formation of an 
appetite in every way dangerous to the health of body 
and mind ? 

And what is the testimony of competent authorities as 
to the results of moderate drinking ? 

In Bacchus (London, 1839), Dr. Grindrod tells us that 
" the habit of intoxication is a confirmed taste or appetite 
for strong drink, acquired in the first instance by "moderate 
ifidulgence. The state of intoxication is that high degree 
of excitement of which moderate drinking is the preparatory 
stage. 

" One of the first stages of intemperance is witnessed in 
the anxious and uneasy feelings which even moderate drinkers 
invariahly experience on occasions when they have been 
accidentally deprived of their accustomed allowance. Sen- 
sations of this nature present undoubted evidence of the 
existence and development of the inebriate propensity. 
Indeed, the great danger of moderate drinking consists in 
the inability to ascertain at what precise period in the 
progress of the vice this unnatural sensation first com- 
mences." 

In Testimonies of Physicians (I^ew York, 1830), Dr. J. 
Baxter says, " The habit of moderate drinking has been the 
principal cause of the widespread scourge of intemperance. 
The laws of gravitation in impelling ponderous bodies 
toward the centre are scarcely more certain than the 
moderate use of liquor in begetting the drunken appetite." 

As to the physiological results of moderate drinking, I 
find the following medical opinions quoted by Dr. Grindrod 
(op. cit.) : — 

"In his Diet, of Tract. Med. (1835), Dr. Copland 
says, ' There can be no doubt that, as expressed by the late 
Dr. Gregory, an occasional excess is upon the whole less 



SPECIOUS EEASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 817 

injurious to the constitution than the practice of daily 
taking a moderate quantity of any fermented liquor or spirit.^ 

"In his Lecture on Health (2nd edioion, 1800), Dr. Dr. Garnett. 
Grarnett said, ' Those who drink only a moderate quantity 
of wine, so as to make them cheerful, as they call it, but 
not absolutely to intoxicate, may imagine that it will do 
them no harm. The strong and robust may enjoy the 
pleasures of the bottle and the table with seeming im- 
punity, and sometimes for many years may not find any 
bad effects from them ; but, depend upon it, if a full diet 
of animal food be every day indulged in, with only a 
moderate portion of wine, its baneful influence will blast 
the vigour of the strongest constitution.' 

" Dr. James Johnson avers that — ' A very considerable Dr. James 
proportion of the middle and higher classes of life, as well J^^'^^^'^- 
as the lower, commit serious depredations on their con- 
stitutions, when they believe themselves to be sober 
citizens, and do really abhor debauch. This is by drinking 
ale and other malt liquors to a degree far short of intoxica- 
tion, yet from long hahit producing a train of effects that 
embitter the later periods of existence.^ 

'' Said Dr. Macrorie, ' After having treated more than Dr.Macrorie. 
three thousand cases in the town hospital, Liverpool, I 
give it as my decided opinion that the constant moderate use 
of stimulating drinks is m.ore injurious than the now and 
then excessive indulgence in them.' 

" Dr. Gordon, of Edinburgh, corroborated Dr. Macrorie, Dr. Gordon. 
saying that in numerous post-mortem examinations made 
on 'the bodies of persons who had died of various diseases 
in a population much more renowned for sobriety and 
temperance than that of London, there was the remarkable 
fact that in all these cases there was, more or less, some 
affection of the liver ; and these people had not been in 
any shape or form intemperate, and they were moral and 
religious people, who would have been shocked at the 
imputation ; but they had been in the habit of drinking a 
small quantity of spirits every day.'' " 

Dr. Sewall says, " I am persuaded that tens of thousands Dr. Sewaii. 
of temperate drinkers die annually from diseases through 
which the abstemious would pass in safety." 

In a letter dated March 15, 1873, Sir Henry Thompson sir Henry 
wrote to the late Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Archibald Thompson. 



318 



THE FOUNDATION" OF DEATH. 



Sir William 
Gull. 



Dr. B. W. 

Carpenter. 



Campbell Tait), "I have no hesitation in attributing a 
very large proportion of some of the most painful and 
dangerous maladies whidi come under my notice, as well 
as those which every medical man has to treat, to the 
ordinary and daily use of fermented drink, taken in the 
quantity which is conversationally deemed moderate." 
And Sir William Gull stated to the Lords' Select Com- 
mittee of Inquiry into the Prevalence of Intemperance 
(1877), thPct "all alcohol, and all things of an alcoholic 
nature, injure the nerve-tissues jpro teTnjpore, if not alto- 
gether, and are certainly deleterious to the health. I 
think there is a great deal of injury being done by the use 
of alcohol in what is supposed by the consumer to be a 
most moderate quantity, to people who are not in the least 
intemperate, to people supposed to be fairly well. It leads 
to degeneration of tissues. It spoils the health and it 
spoils the intellect. Short of drunkenness (that is, in 
those eifects of it which stop short of drunkenness), I 
should say, from my experience, that alcohol is the most 
destructive agent we are aware of in this country." 

Although it is not easy, and perhaps not possible, to 
demonstrate the nature and exact amount of harm resulting 
to any particular individual from the occasional or even the 
regular use of alcohol in very minute quantities, scientific 
observation tends — as we have seen — to prove that it 
always is, and acts as, a poison, whether in sickness or 
health. 

Dr. B. W. Carpenter, in his Temperance and Abstinence 
(London, 1881), gives a very valuable analysis of both the 
difficulty of tracing the direct results of extreme modera- 
tion and of penetrating the web of specious reasoning 
which is woven around it. He says, " ' The little I take 
does me no harm,' is the common defence of those who 
are indisposed to abandon an agreeable habit, and who 
cannot plead a positive benefit derived from it ; but before 
such a statement can be justified, the individual who 
makes it ought to be endowed with the gift of prophecy, 
and to be able t'o have present to his mind the whole 
future history of his bodily fabric, and to show that, by 
reducing the amount of his excess to a measure which 
produces no immediately injurious results, he has not 
merely postponed its evil consequences to a remote period, 



SPECIOUS KEASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 319 

but lias kept himself free from them altogether. The onus 
prohandi lies with those who assume the absence of a con- 
nection, which is indicated bj every fact with which we 
are acquainted. ... If the medical man has no hesitation 
in regarding those severer derangements of the digestive 
and excretory organs, which are so common amongst those 
who commit habitual excesses in eating and drinking, as 
the consequence of those excesses, why should he refrain 
from attributing the milder but more protracted disorders 
of the same organs to the less violent but more enduring 
operation of the same cause ? 

" Let it be remembered that we have multitudes of 
cases, in which the long- continued agency of morbific 
causes, of comparatively low intensity, has been proved to 
be not less potent in the end than the administration of 
a poison in a dose large enough to produce its obviously 
and immediately injurious effects. Thus, a man who 
would be rapidly suffocated by immersion in an atmo- 
sphere of carbonic acid, may live for weeks, months, or 
years in an atmosphere slightly contaminated by it, with- 
out experiencing any evil effects which he can distinctly 
connect with its influence, and yet who will now deny 
that the constant action of this minute dose of aerial 
poison is insidiously undermining his vital powers, and 
preparing him to become the easy prey of any destructive 
epidemic ? So, again, we see that a brief exposure to the 
pestilential atmosphere of the swamps of the Guinea coast 
is often sufficient to induce an attack of the most rapidly 
fatal forms of tropical fever ; but it may be long before 
the dweller among the marshy lands of temperate climates, 
inhaling the paludal poison in its less concentrated form, 
becomes affected with intermittent fever ; yet no one has 
any hesitation in recognizing the connection of cause and 
effect in the latter case, as in the former. So, again, the 
resident in a town, where the insufficiency of the drainage 
causes the surface-moisture to be imperfectly carried off, 
and to be not merely charged with the malaria of vegetable 
decomposition, but with the miasmatic emanations of 
animal putrescence, may be free from serious disorder, if 
the cause does not operate in sufficient intensity ; yet he 
becomes liable in a greatly increased degree to the opera- 
tion of almost every morbific agent, and especially to that 



820 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



of fhe various forms of fever-poison ; and no one who has 
paid even a slight degree of attention to the result of the 
sanitary inquiries which have now been carried on for 
many years past, hesitates in admitting the relation of 
cause and effect between insufficiency of drainage' and the 
higher rate of mortality in undrained localities, although 
not only days and weeks, but months and years, may be 
required for the operation of that cause upon the animal 
system." 



The late 

Samuel 

Bowley. 



A valuable 
suggestion 
by Mr. C. 
Kegan Paul. 



The decep- 
tive cha- 



But even supposing that an innocent dietetic dose of 
alcohol had been discovered, all reasonable arguments tend 
to prove that abstinence would even then be preferable to 
moderation. In a letter published in the Temjperance 
Record (July 3, 1879), the late Samuel Bowley said, 
" Total abstinence is simple, clear, and safe for all. 
Moderation gives no help to the drunkard. Total absti- 
nence, by God's blessing, has reclaimed thousands. Mode- 
ration keeps alive the insidious temptation, but supplies no 
strength to the weak to resist its power. Total abstinence, 
by removing the temptation, effectually protects all. 
Moderate drinking necessarily requires the continuance of 
the manufacture and sale to supply its demands. Total 
abstinence quietly, but effectually, annihilates the traffic 
with all its abounding evils. Moderation attracts the 
young by the apparent absence of danger. Total abstinence 
removes the danger, and thus secures their permanent 
safety. Moderation leads the masses to the public-house, 
total abstinence keeps them outside." 

In an article on Abstinence and Moderation in To-Day 
(January, 1884), Mr. 0. Kegan Paul very appositely says 
that, even if an invalid believes that in giving up what is 
called a moderate supply of alcohol, "he is giving up a 
source of strength, either mental or bodily, I would 
suggest, even supposing this to be a possible danger, that, 
whereas he knows that drink is sapping his strength, 
weakening his will, lowering his bodily tone, abstinence 
can do no more, while it may do much less, and if he is to 
be a weakling under any circumstances he had better be a 
sober than a drunken invalid." 

The worker, whether he is a clergyman, an author, or 
a day-labourer, who turns to alcohol to build himself up 



SPECIOUS EEASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 321 

after a hard day's work, simply balances one exhaustive racterofthe 
process with another— the exhaustion of labour with the [Jibfted'to 
exhaustion of the system caused by its etforts to dispose the moderate 
of the alcohol. A certain sense of relief, of apparent ^f.^^oi in 
return of equilibrium, may be felt because of the change cases of ex- 
consequent upon the transfer of the exhausting process from labour, 
from one domain of the system to another. But this sense 
of relief is purchased at the expense of the sum total and 
term of active efficiency. The nervous system irritated 
by alcohol will exact larger and larger doses for procuring 
the brief and deceptive relief ; greater efforts will be 
exacted of the system for getting rid of it, and thus the 
two exhaustions going on in seemingly parallel lines, 
will gradually manifest convergence until at last the 
powers of endurance and labour will more or less abruptly 
collapse. 

§ 76. Of the effects of " moderate " drinking on the Dr. Grindrod 
temper and disposition, Dr. Grindrod (op. cit.) remarks — p?oducedby^ 

" Experience demonstrates that the moderate but moderate 
habitual use of inebriating liquors inflames the passions upon 'temper 
and renders the disposition susceptible of even slight and^judg- 
provocation. It weakens, if it does not to a great degree 
destroy, the powers of reflection, deliberation, and judg- 
ment ; the relations of things are viewed through a coloured 
and distorted medium, and with these radical transitions 
there follows an utter inability to estimate character 
and actions, with dispassionateness and discrimination. 
Aristotle observes that man while in a sober state reasons 
with correctness, because he makes a proper use of his 
judgment; in a state of utter intoxication, he does not 
reason at all; when, however, he is partially under the 
influence of wine, he reasons inaccurately, and therefore 
readily falls into error and mischief." 

Says Dr. Baer (AlcohoUsmus, Berlin, 1878), " Undis- Dr. Baer on 
turbed reflection and quiet comparison, critical regard and produmi^on 
deliberate judgment, impartial observation of facts and the menfai pro- 
weighing of their relationships — such are the mental alcohol, 
processes to which mankind owes the entire treasure of 
positive knowledge, including the progress of natural 
science, technique, and industry; such processes are cer- 
tainly not promoted hy alcohol." 

The Rev. Dr. Hewitt says that " the French drink to Dr. Hewitt 

T 



322 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



on the cha- 
racter of 
moderate 
drinking 
among the 
French. 



just tHat point at whicli the moral sense and judgment are 
laid asleep, but all tlieir other faculties remain awake. If 
they do not drink to absolute stupefaction or intoxication, 
it is because sensuality with Frenchmen is a science and a 
system." 

To-day it would not be fair to say this of Frenchmen 
only. 



The moral 
responsi- 
bility of the 
moderate 
drinker. 



Equally deplorable are the effects of " moderate " 
drinking on man's sense of duty to his fellows. 

Moderate drinkers often argue that as they have 
always been moderate, have never exceeded, nor even been 
tempted to exceed, they can see no reason why they should 
forego what they regard as an innocent indulgence, if not 
a positive benefit, because there are weak people who lack 
judgment or power to restrain their appetites within 
proper limits.* 

* "An analysis of the moral elements alleged to be strengthened 
by temptation in the exceptional cases of 'superior' virtue, will not 
justify the position of indiiference to the fate and feebleness of 
others. The moral elements involved are two-fold : intellectual and 
emotional. First, a person declines to do a certain act, because, 
though pleasant at the moment, it is unfitting in its relations, and 
profitless in the long run. It is a violation of law, and therefore un- 
philosophical or foolish. All sin is so, if we could but see it : and 
when we actually decline pleasant sins, we do see it. This may be 
called the ' sense ' of virtue. But, second, there is the ' sensibility ' 
of virtue. We decline sin as sin, that is, because it is a 'wrong' 
thing : because it is a relation which is bad ohjectively, and the doing 
of which would put us in a bad relation subjectively . In other words, 
our virtue is at once our purity, our humanity, and our piety ; we 
abstain from transgressing law out of regard to the interests of our- 
self and mankind, and out of reverence to the Creator of the law. If 
these perceptions and feelings are strong, we shall act upon them 
habitually — in other words, we shall crystallize our nature in the 
mould of virtue. Is not that better than spasmodic attempts at 
virtue, with the risk or reality of frequent failure ? But the state of 
mind, and attitude of being, here described, is just as true of the 
Abstainer from all strong-drink, as of the Abstainer from (what he 
calls) ' excess.' Both resist temptation for essentially the same reasons 
— but the one happens to Icnoiv more accurately where the evil com- 
mences, and the other certainly feels more tempted to yield to the 
temptation in consequence of having a lilcing for the drink. 

' Resist beginnings : whatso'er is ill, 
Though it appear light and of little moment, 



SPECIOUS REASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 323 

In a letter to tlie Inquirer (November 18, 1882), the The Rev. 
Rev. Stopforcl A. Brooke, after likening the course of tlie Irookel)^' 
drinker to a journey, says, " The question is, seeing that this point. 
the journey is so deadly a one, ouglit a man to begin it at 
all ? If he begin lie is in danger of going on, and there is 
not one inch of the way wbich is safe ; for alcohol has this 
peculiar property, that it always lures onwards, that one 
glass asks for another. The moderate drinker is obliged 
almost daily to resist that allurement, and he is in con- 
tinued peril of failures to resist ; and, indeed, it is a wonder 
he is not more afraid, for the whole mass of those who 
have been killed by alcoholic diseases, who have been made 
criminals and brutes by alcohol, whom alcohol has driven 
mad, and who have sown in their children the seeds which 
afterwards quickened weakness of constitution, on which 
any disease seizes, into idiotcy or mania or early death, 
began in the same way, went the first stage with the 
moderate drinker, but could not resist the invitation for 
more which the first stage invariably makes. It is because 
all this is so terribly true that we say, and with justice 
and fairness, that the moderate drinker is in danger, and 
that the example he sets does more harm than he is 
aware of." 

But, regarding the habit for the moment as the innocent 
indulgence or benefit which the moderate drinker claims, 
what if these weak ones could be strengthened by this 
self-denial on the part of the strong ? And if this does 
not impress, let us come closer, and ask how it will be if 
the weak one shall appear in our own household, be a 
beloved son, who cannot stay his hand as we have been 
able to stay ours ? 

Ah ! then the narrow reasoning falls through, and in 
the degradation of our ov/n child we first feel how it is 
that the thousands and tens of thousands of other parents, 
mourning and ashamed, had a claim that we failed to 

Think of it thus — that what it is, aagmented, 

Would run to strong and sharp extremities ; 

Deem of it, therefore, as a serpent's egg, 

Which, hatched, would, as its kind, grow mischievous ; 

Then crash it in the shell.' 

Shakespere." 

— Dr, F. R. Lees, in Temperance Text-Bool-, vol. i. (London, 1884). 



324 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

recognize, and how tlieir sliame and sorrow is our 

reproach. 

The Rev. Says the Rev. James Smith, in his Temperance Refor- 

in refutation i^cL^'^on and its Glaiins upon the Christian Church (London, 

oftheargu- 1875), "It is Urged against the temperance reformation 

moderation that temperance is a greater virtue than abstinence. It is 

ab3t?**^n*^^'^ urged that moderation is the dictate both of reason and 

Scripture, abstinence the dictate of fanaticism and bigotry 

— the latter, being unnatural and unreasonable, will defeat 

its own end, and by producing a reaction will foster the 

very evil it is meant to cure ; you might as well abjure 

food because some are gluttons, or take a pledge never to 

speak because language is often abused, as abjure strong 

drink or take a pledge to abstain because some become 

drunkards. 

" Such reasoning has a superficial look of plausibility, 
but it will not bear examination. It assumes that strong 
drink is a necessity, or least very useful, and that its 
ordinary use is in accordance with nature and reason. 
But if this be not so, if abstinence be more reasonable and 
natural than drinking, the argument is worthless. There 
can be no reaction where there is nothing to react, and the 
desire for strong drink never originates m abstinence from 
it, but in the use of it. If it were a natural appetite, its 
unnatural repression would, in all probability, produce a 
reaction ; but it is not natural, and our contention is, that 
the more the laws of nature are understood, the character 
of strong drink examined, and the dictates of reason and 
science obeyed, the more general will the practice of 
abstinence become. 

" It is, no doubt, a matter of frequent occurrence that 
where intemperate habits have been already formed, a 
period of enforced abstinence is succeeded by a deeper 
debauch ; but such a case is quite beside the mark, unless 
it can be shown that the craving for strong drink was 
formed originally in consequence of abstinence, and that a 
similar craving is likely to be formed in cases of habitual 
voluntary abstinence, which is directly contrary to science 
and experience. The analogy between abstinence from 
strong drink and from food is clearly inadmissible, unless 
some specific kind of food of a highly unwholesome and 
dangerous character be selected on which to base the 



Paul on tbe 
same point. 



SPECIOUS EEASONINGS OX THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 325 

argument ; but in ttat case the argument is manifestly 
destroyed. We object to strong drink as a wrong kind of 
drink, and we would equally object to any kind of food of 
wliicli the characteristic ingredient was alcohol." 

In the Church Sunday School Magazine (September, c. Kegan 
1883), Mr. C. Kegan Paul says— 

" It is admitted that for the drunkard, for the man who 
has a craving for di'ink, total abstinence is needful ; but we 
are told that moderation is a better thing, and that those 
who can use their liberty aright had better do so. Bat 
see how such argument looks from the side of the drinker. 
In the first place, not all who have these cravings, and 
who are therefore in imminent danger, are ready to admit 
that the case is so ill with them. They are not prepared 
to say, as it were, to the world by the fact of abstinence, 
that being unable to govern their appetites they put away 
temptation once for all, nor is there any reason why they 
should thus introduce every one into the dark secrets of 
their souls. But knowing ' the plague of their own heart,' 
they may well be content to have this private reason for 
joining a band of persons who give up strong drink for 
the equally true, but less urgent reason, that abstinence 
for social causes, perhaps on all grounds of health and 
morals, is the better way. 

" Besides, there is something mocking and cynical in 
going to a person to whom drink is a temptation — the 
power of which is difficult to realize by those who have 
given little attention to the matter — who is shaken by the 
very scent of drink as by some outside physical force, who 
craves for alcohol as the hart pants for the water-brooks, 
even when he knows it is like the rill in German story, 
which babbled as it ran along, ' Whoever drinks of me 
will become a wild beast ' — there is something cynical, I 
say, in virtually appealing to such a one, ' You to whom 
this is so tremendous a struggle must make it, hut I to whom 
it is next to none loill not share your burden tvith you.'' " 

But God sometimes speaks through a single individual 
experience with a voice that smites like a sword sheer 
through the most "impregnable walls of plausible and 
specious argument in which we selfishly intrench and con- 
ceal a cherished evil. Nothing that any one can say, be 
it ever so cleverly, in favour of alcoholic liquors, can stand 



32G 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Charles 
Lamb's 
warning 
appeal to 
young men. 



Dr. Howard 
Crosby's ob- 
jections to 
the temper- 
ance pledge, 
and Mr. 
Wendell 
Phillips' 
reply. 



for an instant before but one sucb heart-rent warning as 
these words of Charles Lamb : — " if a wish could trans- 
port me back to those days of youth, when a draught from 
the next clear spring could slake any heats which summer 
suns and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the 
blood, how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, 
the drink of children, and of childlike holy hermits ! In 
my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment 
purling over my burning tongue — but my waking stomach 
rejects it. That which refreshes innocence only makes me 
sick and faint. But is there no middle way betwixt total 
abstinence and the excess which kills you? For your 
sake, reader, and that you may never attain to my ex- 
perience, with pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that 
there is none, none.'^ 

§ 77. The question of the worth and effectiveness of the 
temperance pledge has evoked a deal of specious reasoning. 
Dr. Howard Crosby, of New York, an influential advocate 
of the so-called moderate use of alcohol, in his lecture 
on A Calm View of the TeTnperance Question, delivered in 
Tremont Temple, Boston (January 10, 1881), declared, the 
temperance pledge to be "a most pernicious instrument for 
debauching the conscience . . . always an injury and never 
a help to a true morality ... a substitute for principle, an 
invitation to further sin." 

In the same hall, two weeks later, Mr. Wendell 
Phillips replied, and concerning the true significance of 
taking the pledge, he said — 

"Dr. Crosby passes to the great weapon of the temper- 
ance movement, the pledge. This he calls ' unmanly,' ' a 
strait jacket ; ' says it kills self-respect and undermines all 
character. 

" Hannah More said, ' We cannot expect perfection in 
any one, but we may demand consistency of every one.' 

" It doesn't tend to show the sincerity of these critics 
of our cause, when we find them objecting in us to what 
they themselves uniformly practise on all other occasions. 
If we continue to believe in their sincerity, it can only be 
at the expense of their intelligence. Dr. Crosby is un- 
doubtedly a member of a church. Does he mean to say 
that when his church demanded his signature to its creed 
and his pledge to obey its discipline, it asked what it was 



SPECIOUS REASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 327 

'unmanly' in liira to grant, and what destroys an in- 
dividaal's character — that his submission to this is ' fore- 
going his reasoning,' ' sinking back to his nonage ' ? etc. 
Of course he assents to none of these things. He only 
objects to a temperance pledge, not to a church one. 

" The husband pledges himself to his wife, and she to 
him for life. Is the marriage ceremony, then, a curse, a 
hindrance to virtue and progress ? 

"I have known men who, borrowing money, refused to 
sign any promissory note : they thought it unmanly, and 
evidence that I distrusted them. Does Dr. Crosby think 
the world should change its customs and immediately 
adopt that plan ? 

" Society rests in all its transactions on the idea that 
a solemn promise, pledge, assertion, strengthens and assures 
the act. It recognizes this principle of human nature. 
The witness on the stand gives solemn promise to tell the 
truth ; the officer, about to assume place for one year or 
ten, or for life, pledges his word and oath ; the grantor in 
a deed binds himself for all time by record; churches, 
societies, universities, accept funds on pledges to appro- 
priate them to certain purposes, and to no other — these 
and a score more of instances can be cited. In any final 
analysis all these rest on the same principle as the temper- 
ance pledge. No man ever denounced them as unmanly. 
I sent this month a legacy to a literary institution on 
certain conditions, and received in return its pledge that 
the money should ever be sacredly used as directed. The 
doctor's principle would unsettle society, and if one pro- 
posed to apply it to any cause but temperance, practical 
men would quietly put him aside as out of his head. 

" These cobweb theories, born of isolated cloister life, 
do not bear exposure to the midday sun or the rude winds 
of practical life. This is not a matter of theory. It must 
be tested and settled by experience and results. Thousands 
and tens of thousands attest the value of the pledge. It 
never degraded, it only lifted them to a higher life." 

§ 78. To take up, in closing, some of the well-worn The fallacy 
arguments, based on exceptional instances, which greatly of positive 
help in forming and cementing the habit of drink, I may cite in argiing 
the very common one of the man who says he has drunk tiie general 
daily, one, two or three glasses of wine or beer, with or 



328 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



from the 
exceptional. 



Examples, 



without a glass or two of -wliiskj, for the last ten, fifteen, 
or twenty years. " Just look at me ! " he says. " Don't I 
look well ? Why, I look in better health than you do, 
and I've never known a sick day. Don't that prove that 
moderate drinking is good for a man ? " 

This sort of talk never seems to arrest attention as to 
the selfishness * of thinking of such a broad question only 
as it concerns the individual. Concerning the individual, 
it sounds convincing, and does convince, or rather satisfy 
many. But considering it impartially, we have to inquire 
into the character and condition of this man. Is he 
trustworthy on other points ? for if not, there is, of course, 
no reason to take his testimony on this. If he is trust- 
worthy, the value of his testimony depends upon what are 
his notions of health ; whether he means by health merely 
the ability of daily attending in the usual more or less 
humdrum way to his duties, or the bounding energy which 
makes work a pleasure, and leaves one a surplus for joy 
and rest when work is done. We must know if his parents 
or grandparents drank, and to what degree ; whether he 
was orderly or dissolute in his youth ; at what age he 
began to use intoxicants, what his occupation has been, 
and what care or precautions he has taken to preserve his 
health. On such and many other points full information 
is essential to a just estimate of his evidence in favour of 
drinking. 

Until cases of moderate drinking continued through 
two or three generations can show generally healthy- 
descendants in the third generation, this plea, usually 
claimed as a " knock-down " argument, has absolutely no 
value, except to point the self-absorption of the man who 
makes it, and those who are influenced by it. 



Another argument very frequently advanced is that 
drinkers, and not only moderate ones, live longer than 
other people, unless accident or high living carry them off. 

Such an argument regarding alcohol is neither better 



* " One long-lived glutton or drunkard kills more by his example, 
and the flattering hopes those who know not their own strength and 
■what they were made to bear, entertain, than Hippocrates ever 
saved." — George Cheyne, in Natural Method of curing the Diseases of 
the Body and the Mind. (London, 1742.) 



SPECIOUS REASONINGS ON THE USE OF ALCOHOL. 329 

founded nor more logical tlian it would, be if applied to 
exceptional longevity in cases of persons living in malarial 
localities, or surviving the ordeal of the Sierra Leone, or 
employed as needle-grinders in Sheffield. According to 
statistics, the age of the latter seldom exceeds forty years. 
In the face of this fact, occasional instances of a longer 
term of existence among them would hardly lead to an 
advocacy of the employment of needle-grinding as con- 
ducive to long life. 

Neither would the fact that a man and his family 
have lived in fair health all their lives to a good old 
age over a foetid cesspool — as seems to have at times 
happened — be likely to be advanced as an argument in 
favour of generally establishing such reservoirs of 
pestilence under the family hearth-stone ! I once heard 
of an extraordinary accident happening to a man at work 
where blasting was being done. During a premature 
explosion, a long piece of the drilling bar shot upward from 
the pit which was being excavated, and, entering the man's 
head under the chin, passed vertically entirely through his 
head, and, still ascending, fell at last at some distance. 
He staggered and fell, and his instant death was naturally 
expected. Not so. To the amazement of all, and the 
downright incredulity of physicians, he recovered, and, 
whereas he had been before the accident morose and un- 
reliable, he was now genial and to be depended upon. But 
from this it would bardly be argued that men should 
subject themselves to this sort of experiment as probably 
conducive to improvement in temper and character ! 



Bat even supposing this argument of alcoholic longevity 
were true, are not the drinkers overwhelmingly more 
numerous than the abstainers ; and therefore, other things 
being equal, the number of aged drinkers would, of course, 
be greater than that of aged abstainers ; and what criterion 
of comparison has been used for the longevity ? To jadge 
from the insurance and other statistics which are quoted 
in chap, x., comparing, under equitable conditions, equal 
numbers of drinkers and abstainers, it was found that 
abstainers much more generally reached an advanced age 
than drinkers. 

But what does this plea for longevity mean, urged by 



330 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

people wliose chief aim in life is not to live — is to kill 
time, not to use it ; and wIlo, if not successful in killing 
time, do not iinfrequently kill themselves ? 

If longevity were the measure of effectiveness, if 
drinkers counted each, day a priceless boon to beused as 
nobly as they knew how, tken indeed would this argument, 
if true, be powerful in favour of alcohol. But we have 
yet to see a man whose character has been ennobled by 
drinking, or a drinker who grows nobler and better as he 
grows older. On the other band, it is a fact that some of 
the most effective lives bave been short. And of only 
three years of public work — such work as no man has 
measured nor can measure — did not the Master say, " It is 
finished " ? 



CHAPTER XIII. 

WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 

" While drinking continues, poverty and vice will prevail ; and 
until this is abandoned, no regulation, no efforts, no authority under 
heaven, can raise the condition of the working classes. It is 
worse than a plague or a pestilence, and the man is no friend to his 
country who does not lift up his voice and proclaim his example 
against it." — Mr. J. Livesey, in the Moral Reformer, July 1, 1831.* 

" Drink, the only terrible enemy whom England has to fear." — 
The late Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. 

§ 79. In discussing the question of what can be done to 
reduce and vanquish the drink-evil, the limits and propor- 
tion of the present work restrict me in touching upon what 
has been done — a noble record, full of interest — to only 
such general mention or occasional particularization as is 
essential to the consideration of further reform effort. 

In the opening pages of this book it was pointed out 
that among the ancients the severest laws were put in 
force against drunkenness ; that it was even, and not 
unfrequently, punished with death. Ancient legal and 
historical writiugs are replete with edicts and instances 
showing that drunkenness was treated as a great crime. f 

Why did the temperance reform efforts in the past 
fail? 

Why have such efforts failed even up to the present 
century ? 
■ Why, at various times during the last fifty years, have 

* Mr. Livesey's first public denunciation of alcohol, 
t See Zenophon, Plato, Athensens, Plutarch, Pliny, Dion of Hali- 
carnassus, Diodorus Siculus^ Strabo, and others. 



332 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Why past 
temperance 
efiorts failed. 



Their cha- 
racter. 



Early- 
moderation 
Societies. 



apparently great strides towards temperance alternated 
with great relapses ? 

What reasons have we to expect or hope that the 
present popular interest and labours in the cause of 
temperance are sowing the seed of a permanent success ? 

One large general difference between past and present 
efforts in regard to temperance lies in this broad distinction 
between the two ages, that in antiquity the nation was for 
the government, or rather the sovereign ; while in our 
days governments, generally speaking, exist for the people. 

Antiquity lacked the innumerable means of bodily and 
mental communication, which, irrespective of the demarca- 
tions of birth, fortune, and special circumstance, suffice in 
our day to bring men together on one common intellectual 
level in the study of mankind. 

Among the ancients, temperance decrees proceeded 
from the sovereign. They were framed to include only 
sucb of his subjects as enjoyed the royal favour, and to 
these the royal mandates were a matter of blind obedience, 
not of persuasion or conviction. Such decrees were as 
fitful in their character and occurrence as the whims of the 
monarch issuing them ; their observance depended on the 
subjects' loyalty, usually an allegiance of craft or fear; 
and they contained no element of reform, although at long 
intervals, great historians, philosophers, and physicians 
sounded the note of warning. 

In later ages the popes sometimes united with the 
rulers of Europe to stay the evil of drink, but to little 
purpose. So-called moderation societies were even formed 
among the nobles of Germany. 

Dr, Baer mentions, in his AlcoJioUsmus (Berlin, 1878), 
that " The First Order of Moderation " was founded by 
Frederick III. ; that the badge, a cross with a design of 
tankards, and inscribed with, the motto Halt Mass (be 
moderate), was worn by the emperor at festivities; that 
bis son, Maximilian I., publicly expressed his abhorrence 
of intemperance at a number of his diets ; that the 
knightly order of St. Christopher " for the abolition of 
profanity and drinking," was founded early in the six- 
teenth century by Sigismund von Diedrichstein, a noble- 
man of Carinthia and Styria ; and that a few years later 
an abstinence fraternity was instituted by Louis, Count 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 8^3 

Palatine, and Ric"hard, Elector of Treves, fifteen bishops 
and princes, and many nobles entering it. 

Dr. Baer also refers to the Palatine Order of the Golden Special 
Bi7ig, the symbol of membership being a gold ring, which thekfaiiure. 
was forfeited back to the community by any member who 
proved recreant in drinking toasts ; and mentions the 
famous temperance order founded by the Landgrave of 
Hesse in 1600. 

Yet all these societies, and numerous others which 
succeeded them, like the e:fforts made in antiquity, soon 
passed away. Why ? Chiefly for these reasons, first, 
because they lacked what we possess — the knowledge that 
alcohol is always a poison, and therefore naturally 
imagined the only remedy necessary lay in moderation ; 
secondly, because these societies did not originate in moral 
conviction of the nature of the evil they were to operate 
against : they were not formed with any reference to 
rooting out intemperance among the people, but were due 
rather to the proud egoism of the nobles, who, indifferent 
to the vice as it existed among the masses, nevertheless 
disdained to practise in common with them. 

This century (nineteenth) has seen a marked departure Character- 
from the whole past in a great many respects, but in mSmtem- 
perhaps nothing so decisively as in the constantly in- perance 
creasing recognition of the sovereignty of the individual, '^<^^^"^^^*- 
and the absolute interdependence of all individuals, high 
and low, rich and poor, of which recognition the general 
education of all youth is a proud instalment. 

Whence we have the steadily growing tendency to 
level all barriers interfering with a universal mental 
development ; and in the struggle for progress, in the 
sturdy investigation of the causes of the inequalities which 
constitute all the difference between worth and worth- 
lessness, between happiness and misery, the students of 
humanity have discovered that alcohol is a chief agent, 
the chief agent, in the sense that intemperance produces, is 
often produced by, is associated with, and gathers to 
itself, all other kinds of vice and degradation. 

Hence the modern temperance movement is based on 
knowledge, conviction, and aspiration, and on a sentiment 
of fellowship and fraternity much deeper and stronger 
than has ever been felt before. 



334 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

This points tlie essential difference "between tlie past 
and the present. 

The epoch About fifty years ago there sprang up almost simul- 

th?present taneoiisly from among the hard-working masses of America, 
popular Germany, Great Britain, and Sweden, the core of the pre- 

temperance j i ^ j. 

movement; Sent popular temperance movement. 

^o^^itpro- These little bodies took the position that alcoholic 

lapsed, and drinks are always harmful, to the individual, society, and 

revived. ^^^ g^g^^g^ 

They discontinued drinking among themselves. They 
went, like the apostles of olden times, among the people 
to preach the only temperance gospel; they were loyal, 
patient, and earnest, and their words, works, and lives 
carried conviction into millions of hearts. 

Still, in a few years the whole movement had subsided, 
and most of those who had promised reform went back to 
their old habits and associations, but — not all. 

Meanwhile, the great advance made in physiological 
science had naturally been applied to the investigation of 
the effects of alcohol on the human system, and the 
ominous dicta of that science, coupled with the appalling 
reports of the effects of drunkenness as made by a more 
perfect statistical system, corroborated and strengthened 
by the genuine and noble pleas of the little band of faith- 
ful ones, re-awakened public interest, and this fresh 
impulse, supported by increased practical knowledge of the 
true character of the evil, has led to many attempts and 
plans for reform. 

§ 80. The present remedial efforts are usually sum- 
marized under the following three heads — political, social, 
and individual. 

And this being the order in which success is most 
generally anticipated, I will deal with them in this order, 
although, for my own part, I believe that individual and 
social reform must be the basis of any permanently good 
temperance legislation. 

There seems to be much misunderstanding and con- 
fusion as to what may reasonably be expected from 
Government. 
Summary of As regards England, every Englishman knows that 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 335 

this Governmeiit is theoretically of the people, through the character 
the people, and for the people. Any Government lacking JJ? Jj^''*^"'^ 
this qualification would soon cease to be. powers and 

Modern English history teems with incidents sub- ol^lb?'*""' 
stantiating this statement. Even a single unpopular British 
measure has more than once been sufficient to overthrow in internal 
the Government passing it. All that exists, therefore, reforms, 
politically speaking, by its very existence proves the 
nation's acceptance thereof, just as much as its disappear- 
ance would prove the nation's disapprobation. 

But while this is true theoretically, and would, in any 
matter which thoroughly aroused the masses, become true 
in fact, we have to remember that the masses are slow to 
bestir themselves. They are like the cow in the pasture, 
to use a homely illustration — calm, benevolent, cud-chew- 
ing, drowsily indifferent to what sort of measures or 
reforms are being adopted by the fence-makers, secreting 
and daily yielding with little demur rich streams of milk ; 
but if the cow be too much baited, the udders secrete 
little, yield less, and a vicious not-to-be-mistaken kick 
upsets the milk-pail, milk, and all. 

The masses have practically let their power slip out of The sove- 
their hands, and, though they can at any time resume it, anf^enc^^^' 
busy and inured to routine, they are not readily roused to responsi- 
do so. Then the suffrage is restricted, the land and . ' ^ •^' *^ 
wealth of the country is controlled by the few magnates, 
and while the masses acquiesce in this state of affairs, the 
will of the people amounts to the will of the magnates. 

This will is expressed through the members of Parlia- 
ment, and the Government being party government, its 
existence depends upon its loyalty to party interests. Both 
of the ruling parties vie with each other for popular 
favour — the Conservative in the direction of maintaining 
the past in politics ; the Liberal in the direction of a 
methodic, slow, and safe transformation and extension of 
political powers and rights in accordance with the impera- 
tive needs of the age. Both parties champion popular 
opinion when out of office, and both of them when in office, 
as far as is safe for their tenure of office — forced perhaps 
by exigencies and considerations they had not pre-estimated 
— ignore and defy it. In such circumstances the Govern- 
ment, being unable to pass measures without its party's 



masses. 



336 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

consent, cannot safelj ignore or resist its party ; and, as 
tlie wealth of the country is largely concerned in the liquor 
trade, and as the liquor trade is the largest and surest 
resource of governmental revenue, it must be apparent 
that pressure for complete or only partial prohibition, 
unless such pressure be brought to bear by the solid masses 
of the country, is not likely to meet with ready response 
from either Parliament or Government. 
The people Another mistaken notion as to the nature and function 

She^^^^^ of Government, is that of supposing it to be a moral 
morality of guardian of the people. The office of a constitutional 
andG^ern- government is nothing more and nothing less than that of 
ment.notthe faithfully executing the laws and decrees of the country in 
for that of an almost machine-like manner, and of taking no initiative 
the people, for either making or abrogating laws without unmistak- 
able evidence of the nation's readiness and desire. 

The avalanches of contumely which have been heaped 
upon governments for not supporting legislative measures 
of or tending towards prohibition, have mostly sprung 
from this erroneous assumption, that the Government is 
the moral guardian of the nation.* If temperance is made 
a national instead of a party question, Parliament and 
Government will make no objection, because on national 
questions Parliament speaks for the people, and on such 
questions the Government is as sensitive to Parliament as 
is the exchange to financiers. As long as the national will 
is not pronouncedly against the liquor trade, Parliament will 
remain practically deaf to special petitions ; but as soon as 
the nation sees the evil of the liquor trade no Parliament 
can uphold it. Any attempt by Government to fore- 
stall the popular mind on this question would be a 
usurpation of popular rights, likely to be productive of 

* I wish, however, not to be misunderstood as meaning that 
morality ought to be separated from politics. I think it indispensable 
to vital morality that no division should exist between private and 
public morality ; personally, I believe the two to be inseparable. 
But it is the people who are responsible for the morality of Parliament 
and Government, not the Government for that of the people. If a 
country is animated by morality, its laws, representatives, and govern- 
ment must be moral; but if, on the contrary, greed, expediency, and 
political sophistry are the motive forces of national life, they will 
inevitably get their completest expression through the representative 
and executive bodies. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 337 

more harm tlian good to the temperance cause ; * although 
of course it is not only laudable, but the positive duty of 
Government members to, in an unofficial capacity, assist in 
educating the popular mind on this subject. 

As Zschokke says, in his Branntwein Pest {The Brandy 
Pest, Aran, 1857), " All laws are powerless for ex- 
tinguishing an evil which has taken root in the life of the 
people ; it is from the people itself that the reform of 
morals must proceed, but no government is strong enough 
to bring it about," 

§ 81. It is a grave question whether the continuous Dangers 
bending of all efforts in the direction of legislation does poiTtkaT 
not divert the individual mind from the individual import- agitation on 
ance of the subject ; whether this making of a profoundly "^^^^ 
moral subject into one of legislative controversy, of 
making a national and race issue a shuttlecock between 
political parties — a stake of gambling for office — is not 
vitiating the cause of temperance. 

The defence of the country against invading armies 
is not allowed to be a question of party tactics, neither 
should the question which, in case of an invasion, would 
more than any other decide the issue of the contest. 

As in the case of an invasion, her army and navy would The para- 
be England's dependence, the enforcement of absolute portance of 
sobriety amon^ the defenders of the country, officers and sobriety for 

, *' the protec- 

men alike, would seem to be a paramount duty of Grovern- tion of 
ment. History furnishes ample precedent that nearly all "ndep"i\d- 
the ancient, many medieeval, and some of the modern ence. 
powers (notably American) prohibited and prohibit drink- 
ing in their armies and navies. 

In the vigorous days of ancient Carthage and Home, 
the penalty for drunkenness in the army was death ; and 
long after, when the people generally had become aban- 
doned to drink and debauchery, the discipline of sobriety 
was enforced among the troops, although at last they fell 
to drink and then their countries were vanquished. 

It is an historic fact that the Ana^lo-Saxon power was The battle of 

^ ^ Hastings 

lost through 
* "We win a snrer victory when public opinion is with us than drink. 
when by catch-legislation we anticipate that public opinion, and suffer, 
according to the law of the universe, a swift reaction." — Bishop of 
Rochester, in his address on Temperance at Victoria Hall, Lambeth, 
Nov. 12, 1883. 

Z 



338 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

conquered by its intemperance, just as were Babylon and 
Syracuse of antiquity. Hume states that King Edgar 
strove to check intemperance by allowing only one ale- 
house to each town. Still, we find that the Anglo-Saxon 
army passed the night before the momentous battle of 
Hastiugs in drink and riot, while the numerically inferior 
Norman forces passed it in prayer and fasting. 

Says Fuller, in his Church History of Britain : — 
" The English being revelling before, had, in the morn- 
ing, their brains arrested for the arrearages of the undi- 
gested fumes of the former night, and were no better than 
drunk when they came to fight." * 

England must look to it that the ravages from drink 
are stopped before it is too late.f Commenting on the 

* E. C. Delevan, in his Temperance Essays (New York, 1866), quotes 
from the Richmond Enquirer, Confederate organ (Oct. 6, 1864), the 
following concerning the downfall of the Confederacjof the Southern 
States : — ■ 

" Do you ask for an explanation of these rapidly occurring disasters 
in a portion of the State where the Confederates, until the 19th ult., 
never suffered defeat ? Here is the key to our reverses. Officers 
of high position, yes, of very high position, have, to use an honest 
English word, been drunk — too drunk to command themselves, much 
less an army, a division, a brigade, or a regiment. And when officers 
in high command are in the habit of drinking to excess, we may be 
sure their pernicious example will be followed by those in lower 
grades. The cavalry forces that had been operating in the valley 
were already demoralized, and since their last visit to Maryland they 
have been utterly worthless." 

t In last year's session of Parliament (1882), it was stated, in 
defence of the soldiers' beer-drinking, that the beer consumed by 
them was not the vile stutf ordinarily sold; but this argument is 
simply saying that there is a difference in the kinds and degrees of 
harmfulness in a specified compound, since all alcohols in whatever 
quantity or quality have been proven to be poisonous. 

In a remarkable symposium contributed by several Belgian 
military surgeons to the Belgian Army Journal (1879), one of the 
writers urges earnestly that the drink-evil in the army should be 
combated by forbidding the sale of brandy and other spirits in the 
canteens of the barracks. A vast quantity of spirits is, it is stated, 
sold in these establishments, and it is in them that the young recruit 
begins to drink and acquires a taste for liquor, with the sanction, as 
it were, of the military authorities, who supply the premises where 
the drinking goes on. And not only does the soldier in every interval 
between drills repair to the canteen to refresh himself with a "nip," 
but brandy is bought and carried into the men's rooms, where non- 
commissioned officers and men carouse together, to the great prejudice 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 339 

general condition of some troops that had just passed The Echo on 
through Canterbury en route to India, the Eclio (January fnlheTrmy"! 
4, 1884) said, " The march through the town to the station 
the next morning was most disgraceful. The men were 
too drunk to keep ranks, and dropped portions of their 
equipment as they staggered along. At the station they 
were quite mutinous, refusing to obey orders ; and one, in 
North-country brogue, was heard to- say he would shoot 
his captain when he reached India." 

Some of the principal English officers, in both army 
and navy, inveigh frequently against drinking among the 
troops. In a letter to John Bayley, Esq., President of the 
Grrantham Temperance Association, April 21, 1881, Sir 
Garnet, now Lord Wolseley, wrote : — 

" The cause of temperance is the cause of social ad- Lord 
vancement. Temperance means less crime, and more J^^^thfafmr 
thrift and more of comfort and prosperity for the people. and drink. 

" Nearly all the crime in our army can be traced to 
intoxication, and I have always found that when with any 
army or body of troops in the field there was no issue of 
spirits, and where their use was prohibited, the health as 
well as the conduct of the men were all that could be 
wished for." 

And to a Good Templar meeting, held in Morley Hall, 
Hackney, in November of the same year, he wrote : — * 

" About ninety per cent, of the crime in our army is 
owing to drunkenness, and when our m.en are removed 
from, the temptation of intoxicating liquor, crime is prac- 
tically unknown amongst them. During the operations I 
conducted in South Africa in 1879, my own personal escort 
was composed almost exclusively of teetotalers. They had 
very hard work to do, but grumbling was never heard from 
them, and a better behaved set of men I was never assisted 
with — a fact which I attributed to their being almost all 
total abstainers." 

In his speech to the troops at Chatham,t Cardinal Cardinal 
Manning narrates of Sir Charles Napier, that — Jhe'samf.^^ 

of discipline. If this idle of spirits were forbidden, better coffee 
would, it is argued, be proyidedin the canteens, and the soldier would 
drink this instead of brandy, to the great benefit of his health. 

* See Alliance News, November 5, 1881. 

t See The Universe, July 22, 1882. 



JvTanning's 
statement. 



340 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

"When lie was 'tumbled over, with forty others, by 
the sunstroke,' and being himself the only one who did not 
succumb, he attributed his escape from death to the fact of 
his being a total abstainer, saying, ' the sun found no ally 
in my brains.' " 

Major- General Sir Evelyn Wood, in addressing the 
same meeting, is reported * as saying : — 
Major- " That his experience fully bore out what his Eminence 

Fveivn ^^'^ had said. Some of the soldiers present would doubtless 
Vvood, in say, ' Oh, it's all very well for the Cardinal to talk about 
ofCardinar total abstinence ; but it won't do for us. We cannot act 
up to it ! ' Well, he could assure them it was a matter of 
regret to him that, in his early career, in the navy and the 
Naval Brigade, he had not the advantages of being a total 
abstainer. . . . Some four years ago, Colonel Hope, of the 
12th, had told him that if he had to go through his thirty 
years' service again he would become a teetotaler. 
Throughout the Crimea those were the best and most 
healthy soldiers and sailors who did not touch intoxicating 
drink. He (Sir Evelyn Wood) also served three years in 
India, including the last fifteen months of the mutiny, and 
he could positively state those who drank nothing were the 
best men. He went to the Gold Coast, and during the 
hundred and fifty days they were in one place he put in a 
hundred and forty-six days' service, only to find himself 
beaten by the attendance of a man who was a teetotaler. 
During the last three years he had rounded the Cape of 
Good Hope four times, and he found that the stokers who 
had to work in the heated stokeholes of the large ocean 
steamers never drank anything but barley water when in 
the tropics. Throughout the Zulu campaign he had two 
regiments under him, one young,, and the other old. There 
was little or nothing to choose between them for good 
conduct or discipline, because they were unable to get any- 
thing to drink. They were the 30th and the 90th Light 
Infantry, and they stood at the head of the list of the 
British army for good conduct. He had beforehand taken 
particular care there should be no liquor in the place, as 
he feared any signs of drinking might lead to a disaster 
before the enemy." 

§ 82. A necessary step toward the solution of the liquor 
* See The Universe, July 22, 1882. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 341 

question, it seems to me, is that all points which make it a 
party question should be removed. 

As a result of political par^z/ agitation on this question, 
we find the whole machinery of the wealth, intelhgence, 
and political influence interested in the defence of the 
liqnor trade, engaged in forming a third party strong 
enough to hold the balance of power in the House of 
Commons. Thej have, happily, not yet succeeded. 

It is still fresh in memory how the liquor-dealers in the Mischiefs 
last election strained every point to secure the election of resuitSifrom 
only such candidates as were in favour of their retaining prematurely 
their present privileges. The Alliance Neivs (January 4, iiqui?5 
1879) cites a conspicuous example. " At the election of a sgff!.d^efence 
member for Bristol," it says, "Mr. R. C. Smart, Treasurer unions,byin- 
of the Licensed Victuallers' Association, said, ' Politics poutSr'^'^'^ 
mean self-interest,' and Mr. Collins ' hoped and trusted agitation for 
they would all act according to their consciencGs for the ^^*^ ^ ^^^^' 
benefit of the trade.' 

"And Canon Ellison,* in his admirable letter to Earl 
Stanhope, on The Church of England Teriiperance Society in 
the Recent Election (1880), drew further attention to this 
point: — "The Licensed Victuallers," he says, "for the 
first time, I believe, in our history, publicly, formally, as a 
body with interests of their own separate from those of the 
whole community, had drawn up their test for Parliamen- 
tary candidates, upon the acceptance of which their 
support, as a united body, was to depend. At a meeting 
of the Licensed Victuallers' Protection Society of London, 
Mr, J. E. Deacon, the chairman of the society, who presided 
on the occasion, stated that very complete arrangements had 
been made for dealing with candidates at the General Election. 
To every gentleman who sought their suffrages four test ques- 
tions ivould be submitted, and the ivay in which those questions 
were answered would decide their action toiuards the candidate: 
The questions are as follows : — 

" 1. Will you, if returned to Parliament, oppose every 
Bill or measure which aims at transferring the licensing 
powers from the present authorities (the Justices of the 
Peace) to periodically elected local boards or bodies, 
municipal, parochial, or the like ? 

" 2. Will you support and advocate the principle that 

* Chairman of the Church of England Temperance Society. 



342 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

for any depreciation in the value of the property of licensed 
victuallers, resulting from future legislation, they should 
be entitled to fair and full pecuniary compensation ? 

" 3. Will you oppose any measure having for its objects 
the curtailment of, or interference with, the present hours 
of opening and closing public-houses, either on Sundays or 
on other days of the week ? 

" 4. Will you give your support to any measure having 
for its object the placing of all ' off ' licenses under the same 
authority and regulation as other licenses ? " 

And the state of affairs brought about by the prohibi- 
tory agitation in the United States is shown in the Annual 
Report of the Brewers' Congress, held at Washington, May, 
1882. The following is a summary of it as published in 
the supplement of the National Temperance Advocate, of 
New York, June, 1883 :— 

" The twenty-second annual convention of the United 
States Brewers' Association was held in Washington, D.C., 
May 11 and 12, 1882. A Washington brewer, Mr. Heurich, 
representing the brewers of the national capital, called the 
convention to order and made an address of welcome, in 
which he congratulated the brewers upon their having 
come to the capital w^hen the United States Congress was 
in session, with an opportunity to meet and greet their 
senators and representatives, and the officers of the govern- 
ment with whom they have, as brewers, business contact ; 
concluding with an expression of the hope that their 
coming might be made ' instrumental in clearing the dark 
clouds which, in many parts of the country, threaten our 
time-honoured business.' 

" The president of the Association, Mr. H. B. Schar- 

mann, of Brooklyn, N". Y., then delivered his annual address, 

in which he congratulated the brewers that in this country 

'the consumption of beer has gone up during eighteen 

' years 679 per cent.' 

"He gave the number of breweries at 2,474; stating 
that 30,000 persons are employed in the beer business, and 
that it has a capital of 152,524,720 dollars invested in it. 
There were 8,536 retail, and 2,034 wholesale dealers in 
malt liquors during the special-tax year ended April 30, 
1881. 

"There were reports submitted from the 'Agitation 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 343 

Committee,' the ' Publication Committee,' by tbe attorney, 
Mr. Schade, etc. Tlie Agitation Committee reiterate their 
claim for beer as a ' temperance ' beverage. 

" The Publication Committee report tliat they have 
printed and distributed nearly 115,000 pamphlets and 
broadsides, and that these pamphlets are electrotyped, 
and, ' after a certain number of the pamphlets have been 
placed where most needed at the expense of the fund, 
additional copies, where ordered, are furnished at the 
actual cost of the paper and press- work.' 

" The report of the attorney, Mr. Schade, recounts 
among other things his successful opposition in Congress 
to the Commission of Inquiry bill, and to the measures for 
the prohibition of the liquor traffic in the District of 
Columbia and the Territories. 

" In response to the petitions from the brewers of Iowa, 
Michigan, and Indiana for financial aid to help defeat pro- 
hibition in those States, 2,000 dollars were appropriated to 
Michigan, 3,000 dollars to Iowa, 5,000 dollars to Indiana, 
and 500 dollars to Kansas. Much larger sums are under- 
stood to have been contributed through other channels." 



As long as the masses have not become intellectually The earliest 
convinced that the harm done by the liquor traffic is greater ^^hen pro- 
than the good claimed for it, such as the multifarious ^^^0^^^*^^ 
employment of many, and the constant and large revenue practical and 
it returns,* so long will any attempt to enforce prohibi- S^^'^^"*^ 
tionj fail, and in their failure promote the traffic. Every 

* The terrible cost of these very advantages, in morals, health, 
and finance have already been pointed out in the chapter on Social 
Results. The Echo (February 7, 1884) states that in his message to the 
Ohio State Legislature, Governor Forster " declares that in twelve 
months four thousand five hundred liquor saloons had gone out of 
existence, and that two million dollars had been added to the 
revenue." 

t England and Ireland have already witnessed the beneficial 
results of a partially eff'ected prohibition. 

In writing on The Police of the Metropolis in 1800, Mr. Colquhoun 
describes the situation in London during the embargo on the dis- 
tilleries, 1796-97, when bread and other foods and necessaries were 
greatly increased in cost by the scarcity of grain ; yet the poor lived 
better, were more comfortable, and paid their rent with less difficulty 
than for many years previously, and there was both less brawling 
and less pawning. " This," says Mr. Colquhoun, " can only be ac- 



344} THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

sincere friend of tlie temperance reforiD. cries out with tlie 
eloquent Canon Farrar: " How long do you mean this to 
continue ? How long are our working classes to be hemmed 
in with glaring temptations, and their dwellings to be 
ringed by public-houses on all sides as with a cordon of 
fire ? How long is the reeling army of our drunkards to 
be recruited by those who are now our innocent sons and 
daughters ? " * 

The writings of such men as Dr. E. R. Lees, in Eng- 
land ; ex-Bailie D. Lewis, in Scotland ; Judge Pitman, in 
America, and many others, have taken the question of the 
justice, wisdom, and legality of prohibition theoretically 
quite out of the list of disputable issues : it is only around 
the question of its best practicable application that doubt 
can still be entertained. 
The hopeful The extension of suffrage, "with the enlargements of 

Queen's last the powers of ratepayers through the representative system, 
speech. including among them the regulation of the traffic in 

intoxicating liquors," promised in the Queen's speech, 
opening Parliament (1884), is a hopeful omen that we 
are at last to know what the people really think and 
want, t 

counted for by their being denied the indulgence of gin, wliicli had 
become in a great measure inaccessible from its very high price." 
And in Ireland a similar temporary prohibition measure had like con- 
sequences, in allusion to which the writer of An Inquiry into the 
Influence of Ardent Spirits in Ireland (1830) states, " The population 
of Ireland was enabled to consume a greater quantity of articles of 
luxury and comfort than in years of absolute plenty." And yet, the 
popular sj'-mpathy not being enlisted, these measures with all their 
benefits could only be maintained for a short period, and when the 
reaction came, drinking and crime became more prevalent than 
before. 

* Sermon in Westminster Abbey (November 19, 1883), on the 
occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of the Church of England 
Temperance Society. 

t " The Grand Jury cannot withhold from the court the amaze- 
ment and horror which they have felt during their in-^'estigations, at 
the systematic countenance of and encouragement to vicious conduct, 
by tlae facilities aflforded by the numberless places of resort for 
drinking and profligacy, thereby providing nurseries for crime and 
destitution; and they earnestly hope that some effectual steps may 
be taken, either by the withholding of licenses or curtailing the hours 
for the sale of intoxicating liquors, and thus grapple with a system 
of demoralization as antagonistic to the interests of religion, and as 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 845 

§ 83. But pending tlie general and full development of Various 
popular conviction and will, up to the point of an irresistible measures for 
demand that the traffic shall cease, there are various general pro- 
valuable initiation legislative measures in that direction, 
which, might be taken. 

First in point of time is Local Option; a measure Local option, 
almost wholly due to the untiring efforts and labours of 
thirty active years by the United Kingdom Alliance, and 
particularly to its brilliant and wdse presidents, the late 
Sir Walter Trevelyan, and the present Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 
wliose motion reads tlius : " That the best interests of the sirWiimd 
nation urgently require some efficient measure of legisla- ^chem?'^ 
tion, by which, in accordance with the resolution already 
passed and re-affirmed by this House, a legal power of 
restraining the issue or renewal of licenses for the sale 
of intoxicating liquors may be placed in the hands of the 
persons most deeply interested and affected, namely, the 
inhabitants themselves," and whose work for securing this 
reform during the years 1879 and 1880 fully equalled the 
efforts of Mr. Gladstone to overthrow the Beaconsfield 
government, both in energy, conclusiveness, and eloquence. 
That his work promises to meet with deserved success is 
shown in the victories he has already gained. 

In 1880, before the election, Mr. Gladstone went out 
of his way to declare that he was not in favour of local 
option; but when the measure was brou.ght into the 
House, Mr. Gladstone said : " I earnestly hope that at 
some not very distant period it may be found practicable 
to deal with the licensing laws, and in dealing with the 
licensing laws to include the reasonable and just measure 
for which my honourable friend (Sir Wilfrid Lawson) 
pleads." 

In three su.ccessive sessions of the present parliament 
the local option resolution has been passed by steadily 
largely increasing majorities ; on the 27th of April last it 
was passed in the House of Commons by a majority of 87. 

Concerning this result, the Times of the next niorning 
(April 28, 1883) said: "Sir Wilfrid Lawson must be 
satisfied for the present with the reception he has gained 

injurious to the social well-being of all classes of the commnnity as 
it is degrading to us as an enlightened nation." — Presentment of the 
Grand Jury at the Central Criminal Court (London, November, 1862). 



346 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The Local 
Option Reso- 
lution of 
the great 
temperance 
meeting in 
Edinburgh, 
March 3, 
1884. 



for Lis resolution in favour of Local Option. The announce- 
ment of Sir William Harcourt that the G overnment accepts 
the principle of the resolution and will take the respon- 
sibility of giving effect to it, has put the whole question . 
on an entirely new level. The thing, it is now certain, 
will be done ; Local Option in some form or other will be 
granted ; the time and the manner alone remain to be 
determined." 

At the great temperance meeting at Edinburgh, March 
3, 1884, the Rev. Mr. Adamson, in supporting the resolution 
(in favour of the Local Option resolution) — " That, whilst 
resolved to maintain all existing legal restrictions on the 
sale of intoxicating liquors, and whilst recognizing that 
the House of Commons has afiBrmed that the ratepayers 
should possess ' a legal power of restraining the issue and 
renewal of licences,' this convention hereby declares that 
no legislative measure on this subject will be satisfactory 
wbichL does not confer upon the ratepayers in parishes, 
burghs, and other districts the full legal power of con- 
trolling the drink traffic, and also of prohibiting it, where 
a majority 'shall think meet and convenient' that the 
traffic should not exist " — added that " he wanted to say 
that modern legislation was going straight in the direction 
of trusting all matters pertaining to the social, moral, and 
intellectual well-being of the people to the people them- 
selves ; and he needed not to tell that great meeting that on 
the whole they made a proper use of what they had got. At 
present they elected their municipal authorities, the educa- 
tion boards, the parochial boards, and they elected their 
ministers of religion. . . . Why, then, should they withhold 
from the common people the right to deal with the curse of 
intemperance ? It was said those houses were put down 
for the convenience of the people ; not for the convenience 
of the men who hold the licences, but for the benefit of 
the community at large. He concluded by saying they 
would never rest satisfied till the people were entrusted 
with the power to say whether public-houses should be set 
down in their midst." 



The attitude On May 7th (1884) a large deputation from this con- 
ofthe vention waited upon Sir William Harcourt, who said to 

toward it. them, " The views of the Government have been distinctly 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 347 

stated as being in favour of the ratepayers having tlie 
power of determining in each locah'ty what they desire 
with reference to the drink traffic. I stated that last year 
in my speech on Sir Wilfrid Lawson's local option resolu- 
tion. I have nothing now to add to it, and nothing to 
change. I adhere entirely without modification to what 
I then stated on behalf of the Government. We desire 
that the local authority should have complete control over 
the drink traffic ; that the locality should determine what 
houses should be licensed ; whether any, or none at all, or 
how many; when they should be opened or closed, etc.; 
in point of fact, that the locality should have complete and 
absolute authority to treat this as a local question, and not 
one as it has hitherto been regulated in every place by a 
fixed statute, which seems to me not appropriate to a 
question of this kind. We regard it as a question affecting 
the general welfare of a particular community like any- 
thing affecting its health, or morals, or those other 
matters which are now confided to its local authority. 
. . . Nobody is more anxious than I am, or more willing, 
to go far in the direction of restraining the evils of the 
drink traffic — as far as possible." 

In Sir Wilfrid Lawson's resolution there is no mention The question 
of the much-agitated question of compensation * to the satio™toThe 

publicans, t publicans. 

No doubt this point is a most delicate one, and difficult 
of solution ; but it must be solved in some way. Many 
arguments tell against material compensation, but there 
are arguments of weight both as to expediency, honesty, 
and justice, which indicate that the publicans should receive 
some consideration in this matter. Their privileges have 
been recognized for hundreds of years, during at least the 
earlier part of which time it was not known that any evil 

* See Appendix on compensation. 

t " It is only with the growtk of democracy that here also we 
are slowly approacliing a time when the' rights of property will be 
frankly subordinated to the rights of humanity and the good of the 
body politic. At present such doctrine is ' unsound,' for in a society 
still essentially plutocratic we recognize — though it is not considered 
seemly so to express it — that a man may have a vested interest in 
poisoning his neighbours, and must not be prevented from doing so 
except upon adequate compensation." — Pall Mall Gazette, April 10, 
1884. 



84?8 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

inhered in drink itself, but only in its immoderate use. 
Through. Ignorance, the liquor trade occupied a moral 
plane from whicli science lias since overthrown it. 
Thepubii- The fact that this ignorance is removed, that alcohol is^ 

the question. ^* ^^^^ known to be rank poison, though it changes vitally 
and fatally the moral position of those who sell it as a 
common beverage, does not therefore absolve society from 
all duty of consideration for the liquor- dealers ; nor is it 
likely to prevent liquor-dealers — with whom long habitude 
has also done its work, and in the continuance of whose 
"time-honoured privileges," as they not untruly call them, 
the homes and livelihood of hundreds and thousands of 
persons are bound up — from mustering all their forces to 
avert the legal ruin which abrupt or rapid prohibition, with- 
out some reasonable pecuniary or other compensation, would 
be to them. It may be that the character of a trade is not 
always necessarily germane to the question of its right to 
existence, especially if its very foundation was laid in legal 
recognition and State protection. If in ignorance of the 
fact and effects of contagion, we had legalized a business 
in which men were authorized and licensed to vend disease- 
infected garments, we could not, later on — when we had 
become wiser — with justice, summarily deprive them of 
the livelihood grounded in their and our ignorance, without 
paying due consideration to the conditions and necessities 
which the change would involve for them. 
The public's On the other hand, it can be urged that if liquor- 

dealers are entitled to compensation for loss of livelihood, 
why not all those who are necessarily affected by the down- 
fall of the liquor trade ? Why not the pawnbrokers, 
nioney-lenders, gamblers, police, physicians, lawyers, jailors, 
and hangmen ? 

Again, it is a truth that liquor-dealers as a body 
mostly deal in adulterated or even wholly spurious wares,* 

* A point illustrated — if illustration is needed — bj the way in 
which some evidently honest liquor-dealers reproach their adulterat- 
ing brethren; possibly in some instances from really disinterested 
motives, but in most cases undoubtedly to check the spread of adulte- 
ration, because in the proportion of its spread it puts the burden of 
State duties on the few who do not adulterate. Liquor-dealers do not 
pay license taxes for the use of water, therefore in the measure that 
they adulterate with water do thej^ sell less liquor, and in the measure 
that they sell less liquor do they have less to pay to the State; aud 



side of the 
question 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 349 

and tlierefore forfeit, by fraud, their claims to compensa- 
tion. And still State and society, knowing this as they 
have kDOwn and do know it, and not having taken effective 
measures to prevent and punish, adulteration, liave been 
almost the same as silent partners in the transaction, and 
have thereby lost much of tliat moral force which, would 
otherwise have entitled them to act more strictly with, the 
liquor- dealers in case of prohibition.* 

Personally, I lean in the direction of those who think 
publicans are entitled not exactly to compensation, but 
certainly to consideration. 

A hint to licensed victuallers of a way by which they ,-^ I'int to 

•/ ^ «/ «/ llC6IlS6d 

might gradually make themselves and their houses ready victuallers 
for prohibition, and at the same time increase their claims ™thfm-' 
to consideration when such change should arrive, was selves and 
thrown out by the Lord Mayor of York, at the annual fofthe°"^^^ 
dinner of the York Licensed Victuallers' Association, inevitable. 
February 8, 1881. The Lord Mayor said that there was 
now a greater use of non-alcoholic drinks, and he thought 
it would be wise on the part of those who held licences to 
encourage their sale. It seemed to him that if the licensed 
victuallers could put themselves more in harmony with the 
feeling in favour of the increased sobriety and for the con- 
sumption of non-alcoholic drinks, they would further their 
own interests in various ways, besides promoting public 
sobriety. 

Some licensed victuallers are acting upon this advice, 
and furnish tea and coffee besides alcoholic drinksjf and 

thus many a liquor-dealer witli a roaring trade pays less to the State 
than some who have a comparatively small custom ; hence the cry of 
the non-adulterating liquor-dealers against the dishonest practice of 
adulteration. 

* Alliance News, February 19, 1881. 

f "Now, if this Church of England Temperance Society would 
bring about a revolution among the publicans and licensed victuallers 
of this country, and if my colleagues and my friends (I am not 
ashamed to call them friends) would allow one of their own set to 
advise them to look to their own gains and to turn their houses — 
those committee-rooms that they used to have, and which will be no 
longer of use to them if this Bill passes in the House of Commons 
for prohibiting the use of committee-rooms in public-houses — instead 
of having those committee-rooms let once in every seven years ; why 
not have wholesome refreshments where the best of everything can 
be got ? and don't you think that the publicans and great brewers of 



350 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

ifc seems fully probable that the liqnor-dealers might 
gradually become almost wholly dealers in non-alcoholic 
drinks. 
Scheme for In this direction also the State might greatly assist to- 

thTconm<^- promote the welfare of the people, by a scheme having due 
ing Interests re^^ard to all three of the chief considerations — the health 
prohibition and morality of the population, the necessities of the 
Sard to exchequer, and the future of the publican. 
health, Many persons, who, convinced of the evil of drink and 

reverlu?'^^^ desiring to abstain, have yet lacked strength to at once 
break off their drinking habits, have tried and found suc- 
cessful the simple plan of daily slightly diluting their 
regular portion of whiskey, wine, or beer with water, until 
the rejection of a drink, thus gradually made insipid and 
uninviting, for pure water, becomes easy and at last natural. 
Now, it is in the power of the State, the people consent- 

tliis country having the means of providing good food and good tea 
and coffee at more moderate rates than those who have got to pav 
rent for their houses, do not you think their profits would be larger ? 
Colfee taverns, I think, are admirable institutions with the exception 
that they do not sell coffee. (Hear, hear.) Anything more abomin- 
able or more filthy than what is supposed to be sold for 2d. a cup in 
coffee-palaces is not to be imagined, and at the very commencement 
of this splendid movement already we must bring in a Eeform Bill." 
— Sir P. 0. Owen's speech, Exeter Hall, April 25, 1883, as reported 
in Church of England Temperance Chronicle, May 5, 1883. 

At a meeting of the Exeter Conservative Association, held in 
Exeter on the 26th of February, 1884, Mr. J. P. Heath read an 
address on the Temperance Question, in which he said: — 

" It must not be thought that licensed victuallers liked to see 
drunkards on their premises, for such men were the greatest 
nuisances they had to contend with, as they drove other customers 
away, and placed the landlord under a penalty for supplying them 
with liquor if they were in a state of intoxication, and he might 
forfeit his licence thereby. . . . Neither must it be thought that inn- 
keepers derived greater advantages from selling alcoholic than non- 
alcoholic beverages, for he knew that more profit was made over the 
sale of a bottle of soda-water than a glass of grog, and over the sale 
of ginger beer than brewers' beer made from malt and hops. Brewers 
were finding out that, and were turning their attention in many 
instances to the manufacture of aerated waters, and through the 
spread of temperance principles by persuasion and conversion any 
licensed victualler would admit that his sale of temperance drinks 
had largely increased of late years, and that he was equally willing 
to provide accommodation for teetotalers who wished to use his 
premises for the transaction of their business as for non.abstainers." 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 351 

ing, to try a similar experiment of drink-cure for the 
nation, bj adopting an annually rising scale of license 
duties, the price per glass of every kind of alcoholic drink 
being definitely and permanently fixed by law ; the use of 
all ingredients in drink save alcohol and water being 
punished absolutely with imprisonment and loss of license, 
whenever detected ; and detection, by whomsoever made, 
to be always compensated by a fixed premium. Gradually 
as the license duty increased, the liquor-dealer would seek 
his compensation in increased wa,ter dilution, the public 
would gradually become accustomed to weaker liquids, 
and would finally reach the point where the growing bodily 
and mental health, and the insipidity of the drinks would 
breed disgust. If, while this weaning process was going 
on, the liquor-dealers kept good coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, 
etc., their trade would gradually become established as 
that of licensed victuallers really, instead of licensed 
poisoners, and they could sell all the various non-alcoholic 
drinks, and thus, properly speaking, sulfer no real loss. 
Meanwhile it would be the duty of the State to furnish 
pure sparkling water to the public, and to the publicans 
might be given the first chance of investment in securing 
this inestimable boon. 

§ 84. When prohibition becomes law, there is one point The para- 
which the temperance advocates should not lose sight of, ^^t^g**^^*-^ 
namely, the exportation of liquor. The influence England Government 
has exercised in this respect on her colonies and those expOT-tatk)n 
savage nations forced by her fleets to trade with her, has of liquor, and 
put an immense responsibility on her shoulders.* in case of 

internal 
* " I am sorrj to say that since the cession to the British Govern- prohibition, 
ment the Griquas hare become a debased people, as much as before 
they were respected. The first thing that the Government did after 
the cession was to license a liquor-shop at Griqua Town and at other 
places within the territory, and from that I trace the debasement of 
the tribe. In order to show you the change that has taken place for 
the worse, I may mention that prior to the cession I travelled for 
fourteen years through a great part of the country, and I never saw 
a drunken native. It was, in fact, against the laws of the country to 
introduce brandy or other spirituous liquors ; but immediately after 
the cession and the licensing of drinking the state of things un- 
fortunately changed. At the time to which I have referred the 
Griquas had a council and a court of justice, in which a regular record 
of the proceedings was kept ; punishments were awarded for offences 
according to civilized ideas, and the country was remarkably free 



352 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Quoting from tie Gazette of India (Angnst 25, 1883) , tlie 
Alliance News of December 8, 1883, says, "A compara- 

from crime." — Hon. David Arnot, in Manchester Courier, Marcli 13, 
1879. 

" Griqualand was annexed to the BritisTi Crown in 1871,' and with 
it a large tract of Bechuana territory. Up to that time, the chiefs, 
Waterboer and Yanke (the former Griqua and the latter Bechuana), 
had prohibited, as i'ar as possible, the sale of brandy in their respec- 
tive territories. So soon as the country was annexed, canteens were 
licensed and opened all over the country, and the people, who had 
become more or less civilized and Christianized, began to go back 
again. They took to drinking, and began to lose all they possessed. 
This became so bad in Griqualand that, in 1877, the heads of the 
Griqua tribe drew up a petition in the Dutch language for presenta- 
tion to Her Majesty the Queen, imploring her to stop the sale of 
drink, as it was bringing them to ruin. — Eev. A. J. Unkey, Bedford, 
August 14, to Wm. Hoyle. Appeared in Alliance Neivs, September 
27, 1879. 

The Friend for April contains a letter from the Nonconformist and 
Independent, from a missionary of the London Missionary Society, con- 
cerning the Bechuanas, the people among whom Dr. Moffat so long 
laboured. The writer, A. J. Wookey, says : — " Magistrates were 
appointed to various districts to represent British authority amongst 
the natives at a distance from Kimberley, which was the seat of 
government and the great centre of European population. Gaols 
were built and police enrolled. At the same time canteens were 
licensed and opened in every available place for the sale of Cape 
brandy. Licensed hawkers, travelling in waggons, carried the same 
pernicious wares to all the native villages and hamlets, bringing dis- 
turbance and misery wherever they came. They would even cross 
the border, and, in defiance of the chiefs, carry on the sale in front 
of their very doors. And if a chief attempted to interfere, he would 
be threatened with the soldiers and police. , One of the saddest sights 
to be seen there any day was that of natives riding backwards and 
forwards to these places on horseback or oxback, infuriated by drink, 
or to see men and women rolling about or lying hopelessly intoxicated 
under the shadow of the staff bearing aloft the British flag. This was 
the licensed process of civilization, under the patronage of the British 
Government — the brandy shop, the magistrate's court, and the gaol. 
The effect of this state of things, especially in these outlying districts, 
was appalling, and many of the natives became more debased and 
impoverished than ever they had been as heathen. Up to this time 
the native chiefs had prohibited the sale of these di-inks in their 
country, well knowing the evils they brought. But the Government 
deliberately broke down the feeble barriers, and flooded the country 
with ruin. At Griqua Town the chief became the prey of the canteen- 
keepers and others, and turned out a besotted imbecile ; and many of 
his people are very little better. In 1877 a number of the chief native 
inhabitants of Griqua Town drew up a petition addressed to Her 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? .853 

tive statement of the import revenue for tlie four montlis 
of the official year and of the twelve preceding years, 
published in the Gazette of India of the 25th of August, 
shows how far the imports of liquor are on the increase. 
The average of the four months (April to 31st July) for 
the ten years commencing from 1871-72 shows the follow- 
ing results, as compared with the revenue collected within 
three succeeding years : — 





Eevenue— 


-April to 


July. 






Average 10 years 

up to 1880. 1881. 


1882. 


1883. 


Bengal .. 
Bombay .. 
Madras .. 
Barmah .. 


. Es. 4,16,000 
. „ 2,30,000 
. „ 1,57,000 
. „ 1,56,000 


4,66,000 
3,56,000 
1,76,000 
2,34,000 


4,93,000 
3,64,000 
1,79,000 
2,98,000 


4,84,000 
3,66,000 
1,76,000 
2,83,000 



" What do these figures indicate ? That in Bengal the 
average increase during the last three years, compared 
with that of the ten years preceding, is 16 per cent., in 

Majesty Queen Victoria, imploring her to stay the ruin coming npon 
them, and stop the sale of drink. This petition reached the Colonial 
Office in November, 1877, but no notice vras taken of it further than 
an acknowledgment to the forwarder. Had the wrongs of these poor 
people been inquired into at the time, it is probable that much misery 
and bloodshed might have been averted ; but the cry of the helpless 
was disregarded." — Alliance News, April 17, 1880, 

The Temperance Record for July 24, 1883, quotes Mr. McKay, 
the Missionary of the American Board from Lake Victoria Nyanza, 
as saying : — " Go where you will — Usequha, Usagara, Ugogo, Ungam- 
wezi, Usukuma, Ukerewe, or Uganda — you will find every week, and, 
when grain is plentiful, every night, every man, woman, and child, 
even to the sucking infant, reeling with the effects of alcohol. On 
this account, chiefly, I became a teetotaler on leaving the coast, and 
have continned so ever since. I believe, also, that abstinence is the 
true secret of continued and unimpaired health in the tropics. Who 
wishes to introduce civilization into Africa ? Let a sine qua non of 
the enterprise be that its members be total abstainers. The West 
Coast is ruined with rum ; it is killing the Kaffir in the South ; and 
even at the East Coast, at Zanzibar, a vile liquor is distilled from the 
sugar canes at Kokotoni, that is retailed by every Hindu, Banyan, 
and Goa merchant in all the coast towns, to the destruction of the 
Suaheli race. Matama or pinicum is the general malt, but, failing 
that, Indian corn and a small millet called mewere are called into 
requisition, the strength being often increased by the addition of 
honey. On the shores of Nyanza, plaintains are plentiful, and from 
them a wine is made which causes king and people to meet on the 
low level of intoxication." 

2 A 



354 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. Robert 
Rae on this 
point. 



Cetewayo's 
remon- 
strances with 
England. 



Bombay 56 per cent., in Madras 13, and in Bnrmah 74 ! 
This increase is most significant. It is full 36 per cent, for 
tlie whole of British India, or at the rate of 12 per cent, 
per annum. Is such a progress in the revenue derived 
from spirits no cause for apprehension ? " 

In his speech in St. James's Hall (May 19, 1870) the 
Hindoo reformer, Baboo Keshub Chunder Sen, bitterly 
complained of the curse the English liquor trafiic had been 
to India. " The whole atmosphere of India," said he, 
" seems to be rending with cries of thousands of poor 
helpless widows, who curse the British Government for 
having introduced that thing." 

In the retrospect for 1882, in the Temperance League 
Annual, Mr. Robert Bae, the secretary of the League, 
says, " The influecne which the English nation exerts 
on the social customs of the colonies is very great, and 
in the matter of our drinking habits, incalculable harm 
has been done to many of our dependencies. Temperance 
reformers, recognizing this, are bound to do all in their 
power to prevent other communities from being saddled 
with an evil which they themselves are endeavouring to 
get rid of." 

He then speaks of the audience granted to the ISTational 
Temperance League by Cetewayo, of his cordial sympathy 
with its views, and his assurances that he had issued a 
proclamation against the introduction of spirits, which he 
would renew on his restoration. " Your spirits and in- 
toxicants are death," said the king, " but it is no good 
shutting the door on my side, for I have no distilleries. 
I think the proper way would be for the N^atal Government 
to assist me by placing restrictions upon the introduction 
of spirituous liquors in my country.* 



* The Alliance News (October 4, 1879) quotes the following from 
the Birtningham Daily Mail : — "It has been discovered that Cetewayo 
has most advanced notions on the subject of the liquor traffic. He 
strictly prohibits the sale of Cape rum and other spirits in his country, 
and a curious story appears in a contemporary to-day, showing how 
this law was promulgated. A well-known trader, some time within 
the last four years, on a visit to Ulundi, surreptitiously introduced a 
quantity of liquor ; and a native, a relapsed missionary convert, who 
was working for the king, got outrageously drunk thereon, and meet- 
ing the king abused him to his face, calling him every bad name in 
the Zulu vocabulary. Instead of the king wreaking his vengeance 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 355 

How needful strict laws against liquor exportation The liquor 
would be if prohibition measures were passed, is fore- sTamtnr*^ 
shadowed by the two notable liquor treaties concluded Madagascar 
during the last session : the first one with Siam,* in April ^^ 
(1883), providing the importation of all kinds of spirits, 
beers, and wines by British subjects on the same conditions 
as those exacted of Siamese subjects ; and the second 
with the government of Madagascar, f May 25th. Both 
treaties leaving Siam and Madagascar bound literally hand 
and foot to the liquor-traders in England and the British 
subjects (a term specially and broadly defined) in both 
these countries. Commenting on the treaty with Siam, 
the JDaily News says, " Much of the alcoholic liquor which 

summarily npon the inebriated fool, he waited until the next day, 
when the man was sober, and then accepted his apology, at the same 
time expressing an opinion that they who supplied the drink were 
more to blame than he was. A law was, however, thereupon naade 
by Cetewayo wholly prohibiting the sale of spirits. 
~ * The treaty with Siam has encouraged Holland, where the number 
of public-houses is limited by law, to follow the example of Great 
Britain, and force upon Siam a liquor treaty identical with the one 
concluded by Great Britain. 

t Says the Alliance News (September 13, 1879), "The effects of 
rum on the native inhabitants of Madagascar are so pernicious, lead- 
ing to commission of fearful crimes when under its influence, that a 
number of Consuls, missionaries, and other influential residents of 
Madagascar, have addressed a memorial to Queen Ranavalona, asking 
that its importation into her kingdom may be prohibited absolutely. 
The memorial and the reply sent by the Queen's Chief Minister are 
in La Sentinelle de Maurice of April 28, and from the reply we give 
the following translation, showing that the Queen is quite alive 
to the necessity for restricting the sale of the spirit among her 
subjects/. — 

" ' The Queen has directed me to thank you for the desire which 
you express that she will not permit rum to enter her kingdom in such 
quantity as to allow the people to drink of it to excess. That God 
may bless your good idea is the earnest wish of the Queen. As for 
myself, I have attentively considered your statements, and they have 
afforded me much pleasure, and I take the liberty of thanking you, 
for I see by them how great is the interest which you take in the 
Malagas! nation. I have the honour to tell you, gentlemen, that 
already a law has been framed which prohibits the drinking of rum 
in the kingdom of Madagascar. In your letter you have shown the 
effects of rum-drinking in all its hideousness, and above all how it 
brutalizes men. You are right; and the Queen thanks you for your 
thoughtf ulness, which has been inspired by your friendship, and for 
the great good of her people.' " 



356 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

finds its way into countries in tlie position of Siam, is little 
better than poison, and onglit to be so labelled." 

As to Madagascar, it is but eight years since the press 
of England rung with praises of the Madagascan Queen 
for her liquor prohibition proclamation (1876). 

England's responsibility for the moral and social con- 
dition of affairs in Madagascar is indicated in the following 
query and answer in the House of Commons debate, 
April 19, 1883 :— 

" Mr. Buxton asked the Under-Secretary for Foreign 
Affairs whether it was a fact that Tamatave, the principal 
port of Madagascar, was supplied to an enormous extent 
with inferior and poisonous rum from Mauritius, for which 
no other market could be found ; whether it had been the 
cause of general and disgusting intoxication throughout 
the town and neigbbourhood ; whether the Hova Govern- 
ment formerly imposed a duty of thirty-three per cent, 
on the importation, and was only compelled by English 
and other consular pressure to reduce sucli duty to ten 
per cent. ? . . . 

" Lord E. Eitzmaurice : ' I regret to say that it is a 
fact that a large quantity of inferior rum is imported into 
Madagascar from Mauritius, and it has, no doubt, been 
the cause of the evils to which my honourable friend refers.' 

If drink should be prohibited in England, and the 
exportation at the same time not prevented, such treaties 
as these (passed in order to make up for those £5,000,000 
less of revenue * so much rejoiced over by the Chancellor 
of the Exchequer, in the last budget ?) are significant of 
how further internal deficits might be made up. 

* The causes of this deficit were well pointed out by the Eight 
Honourable Balfour, Lord Advocate of Scotland. "The weightiest 
utterance on the liquor traffic in Scotland came from the highest 
, Scottish Pai'liamentary official, the Eight Honourable Lord Advocate 
Balfour. We read with much pleasure all that his lordship so elo- 
quently said with regard to the progress made by the temperance 
reformation, especially in Parliament, and we commend his lordship's 
testimony to tlaose who would fain believe that the temperance re- 
formers are unable to move on. Of the £5,000,000 which is lost to 
the revenue, a large share of credit is justly due to the prohibitionists. 
The Cameron Act of 1876, the Irish Sunday Closing Act of 1878, and 
the Steamboat Passengers Sunday Act of 1880 have been eminently 
helpful in that beneficial reduction." — The Social Reformer, February, 
1884. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 357 

§ 85. Morewood, in liis Inebriating Liquors (1838), National 
quotes the following pregnant saying of Playfair : — under ithe 

" When a nation becomes the slave of its revenue, and liquor 
sacrifices everything thereto, abuses that favour revenue ^^'^^^^^• 
are difficult to reform." 

And liquor legislation in England to this day has 
proved the truth of this statement. For some three 
hundred years it has been the case that in the measure 
revenue has been needed, English Grovernments have 
almost invariably encouraged distillation and increased 
the facilities for the consumption of liquor. 

As early as 1552 the first Licensing Act was passed : — Brief sum- 
" An acte for keepers of ale-houses to be bound in recog- Sstory^o?^ 
nizances, and giving the justices power to close ale-houses licencing. 
in such town or towns as they shall think meet and 
convenient." In 1553 a law was passed providing that 
no town should be granted more than two wine licences, 
excepting 22 ; among these last, London was allowed 40, 
York 8, Bristol 6, and the others 4 and 3. But neither 
Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, nor Leeds 
were included among these exceptions. During James I.'s 
reign (1603) licence was granted by letters patent. In 
1643 the Long Parliament laid a tax on beer and ale for 
the ensuing year, calling it by the new name excise, pro- 
bably an anglicizing of the Belgian accilsse, signifying 
tribute. 

In 1753 an act was passed for the more easy conviction 
of persons selling ale and strong liquors without licence. 
In 1828 the liquor-dealers got permission to appeal to the 
quarter sessions from decisions by justices of peace. In 
1830 the pernicious Beer Act was passed, to rival the 
public-house, it was claimed. In 1860 the Refreshment 
Houses and Wine Licences Act was passed, "to facilitate 
the sale and consumption of light foreign wines in con- 
fectioners' shops and eating-houses." February 10, 1860, 
Mr. Gladstone made a proposition for reducing the The Grocers' 
duty on brandy from fifteen shillings per gallon to eight Licence Act. 
shillings and twopence — the colonial duty ; and although 
this effort failed, he succeeded in 1861 in passing the 
Grocers' Licence 'Act. 

The harm that Act has done is incalculable. Already 



358 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The Satur- 
day Review 
on the 
Grocers' 
Licence Act, 
in regard to 
its effect in 
the drawing- 
room. 



in the Evidence on Drunkenness before the House of 
Commons, 1834, it was shown that Grocers' Licences did 
great harm. 

The Saturday Review (January 21, 1871), in an article 
on Drawing-room Alcoholization, says in regard , to the 
results from these licences — 

" If the Lancet laments, as it has done, the over-prescrip- 
tion of stimulants which was ' too much in fashion a few 
years ago,' its acknowledgment of the perhaps irreparable 
evil is unseen by the general reader. The literature of 
temperance societies and police reports does not affect the 
divinities of our Olympus, who hardly guess the striking 
resemblance between their nectar and the gin of the 
' masses.' , . . The rich escape the publicity of their 
practices which befals our poor, and consequently we 
cannot so well guess at the causes of that failure in duty at 
home, and in discretion abroad, which appears to be on the 
increase ; but there is reason to believe that the frequent 
' pick-me-up,' the mid-day and afternoon sherry or cham- 
pagne, may have much to do with the pace at which young 
men and maidens, old men and children, Mayfair mothers 
and Belgravian beauties, are posting downhill. . . . In- 
dulgence in any vice always entails others, but the distinct 
effect of alcohol is so to affect the nerves and brain that 
the material power to resist any temptation is lessened in 
proportion to the quantity taken. This is hardly, then, a 
safe stimulant for women, nor will it, even in small quan- 
tities, advantageously develop their peculiarities. . . . 
Supposing the lady of the house never exceeds the sherry 
she can carry with dignity and self -approval, and get 
decently through her daily round of deadly-lively occupa- 
tion, she remains a proof that a woman with a taste for 
strong liquors has seldom any other taste. Her maid puts 
on her clothes, but she is careless of her appearance, and 
even liable to personal unkemptness. She is often un- 
punctual, fractious before her dram, and dull afterwards. 
She does not cultivate friends or acquaintances who could 
be any check to her practices. She likes her mankind to 
be much away from the house, and if they take no notice 
of the quantity of wine consumed in their establishment 
she will be affectionate, if rather stupid, to them. Of what 
is pure and noble in life she loses appreciation, while all 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 359 

that is animal is intensified in her. If she has children, 
they will probably suffer from constitutional depression and 
weakness, and ' tone ' will be plentifully supplied by port 
wine, and even brandy, from their infancy up. With the 
career of the boys we are not here concerned, but of the 
girls what may or may not be prophesied ? If they have 
escaped positive disease by the time they are launched in 
the world, they will be, at all events, dependent for their 
' go' in society on copious champagne and frequent sherry. 
Naturally they will join the increasing mob of fast girls, 
with all that is involved in that evil. We are sensible of 
a distinct moral relaxation among women, and of a new 
sort of unwomanly recklessness in the presence of men. 
We complain of a prevalent coarseness even among the 
virtuous, not only of manner, but of imagination and pur- 
suits, and we are sometimes tempted to prefer the age of 
Nell Gwynne or Madame de Pompadour to the actual con- 
fusion of daredevil women and unabashed spinsters. It 
would seem that alcohol has something to do with this 
disorder, for the physical effects of it on women are proved 
by medical investigation to be precisely what would 
denaturalize them." 

Commenting on this article Dr. Anstie, in a paper on The Prac- 
The Use and Abuse of Alcohol hy Women, in the Practitioner onThe same. 
(March, 1871), says— 

" The fact is, that all tipplers become more or less 
untruthful, but that female tipplers invariably become 
shameless and most skilful liars. And the favourite lie 
which they invent as an excuse for their habits is an 
apocryphal medical order ' to take plenty of support and 
stimulants.' We have personally detected the manufac- 
ture and skilful dissemination of this particular falsehood 
in several instances, and the practice is notorious to 
physicians who see much of nervous diseases." 

And the Spectator (February 18, 1871) says, in an article The 
on Women and Alcohol— fnTomln 

" It is ruin for them, as it is for men, and in both cases and alcohol, 
for the same reason, because any narcotizing poison, once 
in possession of the system, paralyzes the will ; but it is ruin 
far quicker, and, owing to the organization of society, 
more complete. We are not inclined to believe what the 
Saturday says and the Practitioner hints, that liquor impairs 



360 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

chastity in women more tlian in men ; but women depend 
upon the will, which the influence of the poison cripples, 
and suffer more visibly when its paralysis has thrown them 
back defenceless upon impulse, whether the impulse be 
kleptomania or concession to solicitations." 
Protests Mrs. Dawson Burns, writing in the Alliance News, 

?r"S ataSst January 4, 1879, says :- _ 

the Grocers' "The motivc prompting these Acts was good; it was 

The^Uianc'e avowedly to draw away the public-house and beershop 
Mws. votaries. Statistics signally show a failure in that object ; 

going still further, they unfortunately prove that, rather 
than lessening the one evil, these Acts open up channels 
for a different class of women obtaining drink who would 
rarely, on account of their social status, have ventured 
into either a public-house or beershop. 

" These licences, though not restricted to, are chiefly 
granted to grocers, confectioners, the keepers of refresh- 
ment bars, and restaurants ; and through such facilities 
the mischief is extended to a section of our female popula- 
tion who largely avail themselves of these means — women 
who, by reason of their educational attainments and 
position, exercise a wider influence than others. 

" These Acts have led to two results : First, the well- 
known habit of ladies, even young ladies, in their ordinaiy 
walks and shopping, entering these more respectable 
refreshment places, and partaking of stimulants between 
the hours of meals. Second, the inducement they have 
given to secret drinking by ladies in their own houses." 

The same article quotes the following from the Lancet's 
protest against the continuance of this Act, which protest 
was signed by 920 physicians, surgeons, and medical 
practitioners : — 

" We, the undersigned, being members of the medical 
profession, beg to record our strong persuasion that the 
' facilities for obtaining spirits, wines, stout, and ale, in 
bottles, which are provided by the ' Grocers' Licence,' have 
a most injurious tendency. We believe that women, 
servants, and children of respectable households, who could 
not, or would not, procure intoxicating drinks at public- 
houses, are encouraged to purchase and use these liquors 
by the opportunity offered when visiting the grocers' shops 
for other purposes. Female domestic servants are often 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 361 

enabled to obtain bottles of spirits, wine, and beer at a 
small cost on credit, or as ' commission ' on tbe bonsebold 
bills. This trade is wholly removed from police super- 
vision, and it is a direct incentive to secret drinking, a 
practice more injurious to the health and moral and social 
prosperity of the community than the ordinary trade in 
intoxicating liquors as carried on by the licensed victuallers. 
We protest against the continuance of this licence on 
grounds moral and medical ; and we urge its consideration 
by a ' Select Committee of the House of Peers ' now in- 
vestigating the subject of intemperance, and the measures 
expedient to reduce the evils of excess. The abolition of 
this special licence we hold to be the first, and perhaps the 
most practical, step within the province of the Legislature." 

In the Lords Committee on Intemperance, 1879, 
abundant proofs were given that the grocers' licences were 
a most prolific cause of increased drunkenness among 
women. 

Early in the present year (1883) the Lancet says :— The Lancet. 

"When, some years ago, we made an energetic but, as 
it unhappily proved, a vain endeavour to influence public 
opinion in favour of the total abolition of grocers' licences 
to sell spirits and wines in bottles,, we pointed out how 
women obtained intoxicating beverages under cover of 
' groceries,' and how grocers not uncommonly gave 
Christmas presents to customers and their servants in the 
shape of bottles of brandy, whisky, or wine. At a recent 
inquest on the body of an old woman, who was found dead 
in her bed after a drinking bout, it was stated that a bottle 
of whisky, Vv^hich had been presented by the grocer, was 
found under the bed-clothes nearly empty, but still clutched 
by the poor victim of this false kindness, although the 
hand with which she seemed to grasp it was dead. This 
is only an incident, but it will serve to show how this most 
mischievous licence tells against public and social prosperity 
. . . Probably, hereafter, when much dire and irreparable 
mischief has been wrought, it will be seen that this State 
facility for the secret pursuit of vice, ' the grocers' 
licence,' ought to be abolished." 

And a little later, the Lancet adds : — 

" The demoralization of women by these most senseless 
and mischievous licences is an evil we have deplored, and 



362 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

whicli would long since have found a sufficient remedy but 
that the great landlords of London and elsewhere would 
find their personal interests affected by the passing of any 
law putting an end to the social plague of the grocers' 
licence. Unfortunately, these landlords occupy positions 
of influence in the Legislature, and therefore the evil 
cannot be wholly remedied. 
The attitude The attitude of the Church of England Temperance 
of Engiand^^ Society on this most important matter has been noble. Its 
Temperance Women's Union addressed letters inquiring into the actual 
ociety. facts as to the evils wrought by these licences, to " clergy- 
men, medical men, coroners, and others." The responses 
to these inquiries, published in pamphlet form early in 
1883, fully substantiate by various and conclusive evidence 
the fact that the grocers' licences have carried, and are 
carrying, the evil of drink among women to an alarming 
extent, and particularly increasing it among a class of 
women who would not think of resorting to the public- 
house. 
Canon In the GJiurch of England Temperance Chronicle (May 12, 

advice to the 1883), I find the following quoted from the speech of 
Women's Canon Leigh, delivered in Exeter Hall (April 26) : — 
boycott ° " I would wish to draw attention, as it has been drawn 

iiquoi-seii- over and over again, to the dreadful system of grocers' 
licences, which I am quite certain is contributing more than 
anything else to the increase of drinking amongst women. 
I should strongly urge upon all the members of the 
Women's Union never to deal with grocers who trade in 
spirituous liquors, and to advise their friends not to do so 
either." 
The Temper- Of the steadily increasing intemperance among women, 

on'thfir'^ the Temperance Becord (November 15, 1883) says :— 
creasing in- "It is One of the most discouraging features of our 

among^^'^'^^ time. Hcccnt judicial statistics clearly show not only that 
women as there is a g-reater proportionate increase of drunkenness 



due to the amongst women, but that in their case the habit is more 
Grocers' inveterate than in men. In the Judicial Statistics for 
1882, recently published, it is stated that the offenders who 
have been convicted for any crime above ten times are 
4391 males, and 8946 females, or 8*9 and 29*3 per cent, 
respectively on the total commitments. In other words, 
more than a quarter of all women in prison, whose offence 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 863 

is not tlie first, liave been in over ten times. A comparison 
of five years will show liovv women have been steadily- 
getting worse in this respect : — 1878, 5673 females ; 1879, 
5800 females; 1880, 6773 females; 1881, 7946 females; 
1882, 8946 females. This preponderance of women, 
according to the competent testimony of the Rev. J. W. 
Horsley, is almost entirely due to the special character, and 
the increase, of female intemperance. . . . One cause 
against which the Lancet has nobly protested is what is 
familiarly known as the Grocers' Licences Act. The repeal 
of that Act, we feel persuaded, would pnt a decided check 
upon the increase of female intemperance, and should be 
urgently pressed upon the Legislature by all classes of 
social reformers." 

The following picture is taken from the chapter on Mr George 
" The Secret Sin," in the Social Kaleidoscope by George R. the social 
Sims. Drawn by a pen to which the world is deeply effects of the 
indebted for a circumstantial knowledge of the drink-evil licences. 
in its connection with poverty, and for striking practical 
suggestions as to remedies and reforms, its details are 
vouched for from personal observations. 

" The pen almost hesitates brutally to describe a high- 
bred, lovely woman by the word ' drunkard.' It seems as 
if such an appellation could give rise in the mind of the 
reader only to vicious, coarse, degraded womanhood. It is, 
alas ! a revelation of these later days of modern civilization 
that intemperance is almost as prevalent among the higher 
ranks of female society as it is among the very lowest. 
There is, however, this difference. Sally Giles, of Lant 
Street, Borough, gets drunk in the public-house and rolls 
about the streets ; Lady Clara Sangazur drinks in her 
boudoir, and dozes off her ' bad headache ' in the quietude 
of her bedchamber. We know through the police reports, 
and we see with our eyes, the havoc which drink is making 
among the lower orders ; its ravages in the upper classes of 
society are known only to the doctor and the friends of 
the family, save when every now and then an aristocratic 
divorce case reveals the fact that the lady was ' in- 
temperate.' Seeing it not, good folks are inclined to 
doubt its existence. Alas ! it is the great social evil of the 
day ; and until it is thoroughly exposed, the means taken 
to stamp it out must necessarily be insufficient. Look at 



364 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Mabel North, this fair young creature, the picture of health 
and pleasure. Who among the admiring crowd about 
would suspect that she is a dram-drinker, a woman who 
gets helplessly drank whenever she has the chance, and 
who will pour ardent spirits down her throat like .water ? 
No one. But I, knowing the history of her case, deem it 
my duty to drag her before the world in her real character 
and lay bare the canker-worm in this lovely flower. I will 
write no word of her that is not true. I have seen her 
within the last twelve hours, and I am yet trembling at 
w^hat I saw. But, lest I should be accused of endeavouring 
to work up a sensational story out of an every-day cata- 
strophe, let me give you the details of her case in the 
ordinary matter-of-fact way. 

" Mr. North looks anxiously at his wife in the refresh- 
ment-room this evening, and sighs, because she has for 
three days kept her promise to him that she would not 
touch drink of any sort. Yielding to her earnest solicita- 
tions, he has brought her to the ball, though he would 
rather for the present she had avoided the excitement. 
And now, flushed with the dancing' and pleased with the 
admiration her beauty has aroused, she has resented his 
anxious and meaning glance, and has accepted iced cham- 
pagne from the hand of her partner. Later on she returns 
again for sherry. At supper she has more champagne. 
After supper she goes again into the refreshment-room 
and has an ice. She eats half the ice, and feels faint. In 
the ladies' dressing-room she knows she will find what she 
requires, and thither she repairs. 'I feel faint,' she says 
to the maid. The maid smiles, and produces the brandy- 
bottle. She is used to her business, and she knows what 
the lady of to-day takes for faintness. You who would 
ape the manners and customs of modern fashion, mind 
, that you put a plentiful supply of brandy and gin in the 
ladies' dressing-rooms — they look for it. You might as 
well have no ices in the refreshment-room as no spirits in 
this apartment. Presently North peremptorily bids his 
wife put on her cloak and come ; he sees the warning look 
in her eyes, and the nervous dread that some one else will 
notice it comes npon him at once. She obeys, and they 
drive home. In the carriage he remonstrates with her. 
She is sleepy and sullen, and makes no reply. Only she 



WHAT CAN BE DONE { 

feels the sense of thirst growing npon her, and when she 
gets home she will drag another bottle of brandy from its 
hiding-place in her maid's room and empty it. 

:5& * * # * * 

"The next day Mabel North's husband is the pictnre of 
despair. Incensed at her open defiance of her plighted 
word, he has taken her somewhat harshly to task, and 
dared her to drink any more spirits. He has commanded 
her to be temperate, as if that were any use. She defies 
him openly. The spirit has done its work, and she langhs 
foolishly, and tells him he may lock the cellar and do what 
he likes, but she will get it still. He fancies he can be 
clever enough to keep drink from her if he tries. He 
locks up all the wine and spirits. She sends her servants 
to the public-hou.se. He finds it ont, and threatens them 
with dismissal if they repeat the offence. She goes out 
and gets it herself, brings it in from the grocer's in the 
carriage, and carries it upstairs under her cloak. For six 
weeks she is in a semi-maudlin state of intoxication, and 
his every effort to stop the supply is defeated. In despair 
he takes away her money, and refuses to give her any. 
He will pay all bills himself. The first result of this 
arrangement is a discovery that there are five times as 
many pounds of tea charged in the grocer's bill as could 
possibly have been consumed. He makes inquiries, and 
finds that tea in a grocer's bill means spirits ; that it is 
supplied to the lady of the house in this manner, and is 
called tea to deceive those it may be necessary to deceive. 
Challenged, the grocer defends himself. He states that it 
is the custom of the trade to supply ladies with spirits and 
charge them as tea and sugar and sauce. It is the large 
secret consumption of spirits by well-to-do women that 
renders the grocers' licences so valuable. Ladies cannot 
buy at the public-house; to draw heavily on the cellar 
would alarm the husband ; but an unlimited quantity can 
be sent into the house quietly by the grocer, and charged 
as tea or some other article of daily household consumption. 
I have not the slightest doubt that the growth of secret 
drinking among ladies is largely contributed to by the 
system of grocers' licences. ... To watch the woman he 
loves becoming gradually dead to fine feeling, dead to social 
etiquette, and at last dead even to decency, is the lot of 



866 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

more men at tlie present moment tlian the world dreams 
of. The secret is hideous, and is sacredly kept as long as 
possible. . . . 

"Mr. North made another despairing effort to rescue 
his wife. He set a watch upon her, and kept her entirely 
without money. At first, unable to obtain alcohol, she 
drank scent ; but the cunning bred of dipsomania suggested 
to her a means of obtaining both money and brandy." 
She opened his correspondence, abstracted all sums it 
chanced to enclose, and hid or destroyed all letters which 
asked him for the return of sums she had borrowed. On 
discovering this, her husband made inquiry in the neigh- 
bourhood, and found that she had borrowed money wherever 
she had upon any pretext found it possible to do so, and 
had even borrowed valuable articles from different shops 
and pawned them. He was forced to check these proceed- 
ings by advertisement, in order to escape ruin. This 
" seemed to break the last tie that restrained her. She 
borrowed small sums of the servants, pawned her jewellery, 
stole from her husband's pockets, resorted to every trick 
she could think of to get money, and every farthing went 
down her throat. 

" Her health now began to give way, and she grew 
violent. Once, when he seized her by the arm, she rushed 
at her husband and tore his face with her nails ; she cursed 
the servants if they interfered with her; and the doctor 
who attended her roundly told her at last that if she did 
not alter, he would certify that she was mad and put her 
under restraint. Tor a time this threat had an effect, but 
the disease had advanced to a stage when it is rarely 
cured. In a week she had a relapse, and, managing by 
some means to get half a dozen of brandy into the house, 
she drank the lot in four days, and was mad drunk. Like 
. a beautiful fiend, she tore about the room cursing and 
raving, and shrieking that she was pursued by devils. 
The servants, terrified by a sudden access of violence, 
called her husband, and he entered the room and ran 
towards her with a cry of horror. He had never seen her 
like this before — a foul-mouthed madwoman, tearing at 
the air, and threatening murder to any one who came near 
her. As he ran towards her to secure her she flung up her 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 367 

" Sbe met her death leaping from an open window to 
avoid her husband ; and the coroner's verdict, translated 
into plain English, says that her death was due to a 
drunken frenzy. I have glossed over this ghastly picture, 
merely suggesting the outlines of it. And yet, toned 
down as it is, there will be hundreds who will question 
its truth and say it is overdrawn. To such I would say, 
Who are the men most likely to know ? The medical pro- 
fession. Ask, then, any medical man whose practice lies 
among women of the better, middle, and upper classes, and 
he will tell you there is no doctor with any connection at 
all who has not half a dozen lady secret drinkers on his 
books. This secret drinking is a social cancer, and it is 
eating away all that is noblest and best in womanly nature. 
We have asylums for idiots and lunatics ; when are we to 
have an asylum for dipsomaniacs ? " 

When we remember that insanity is more prevalent and The most 
less curable proportionately among drinking women than ?easori"for 
among- drinking men; that the children of the drinking the repeal of 
mother are more certainly victims of alcoholic heredity in licences. 
all its either fatal or most baneful and degrading forms, 
than are those of the drinking father ; — when we remember 
these things, then indeed does the necessity for the repeal 
of such an Act as the Grocers' Licences come home with 
overwhelming force. 



§ 86. Besides these large measures, there are many Various 
minor legislative steps of more or less importance, both of j^tive^^^'^' 
preventive and restrictive character, which might be taken, measures. 
For example, it should no longer be left optional with Restriction 
licensing magistrates to renew licences to publicans who oftenem^? 
are disreputable and strain or transgress the law. It ought licences, 
to be compulsory to have large and low windows to public- Low 
houses (as is the case on the continent), so that passers J^mpuTsOTy 
could see what was going on within. If it is a respectable for public- 
thing to frequent public-houses, why should the scenes °"^^^' 
within be concealed ? If it is disreputable, why should it 
have the encouragement of being specially screened, and 
the police be at the same time hindered in their duty of 
watching such places ? 

Publicans ought to be forbidden to employ women as 



368 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Prohibition 
of the em- 
ployment of 
women as 
bar-tenders. 



Public con- 
veyances 
should 
neither bear 
the names of, 
nor have 
their stations 
at, public- 
houses. 



Canon 
Ellison on 
juvenile in- 
temperance 
in Liverpool 
and Man- 
chester. 



bar- tenders.* Among incitements to drink, especially in 
England, Denmark, and Sweden, are tlie barmaids. Some 
of the prettiest girls in England are to be found behind the 
liquor bars, a fact illustrated by the Annual Barmaid 
Shows. The Danish town of Yeile has recognized the 
presence of these girl bar-tenders, as a cause of intemper- 
ance, by imposing restrictions on public-house keepers, who 
are forbidden by the town authorities to employ servant- 
maids under the age of forty years ! If such a law as this 
could be passed and enforced in London, and other large 
centres, what incalculable good would be the result as 
regards both drink and the social evil. It is well known 
that the women thus employed are demoralized and de- 
graded in body and mind. They live generally but a few 
years, and the majority of them, whether death comes early 
or late, die as abandoned women. Not a few students of 
the social evil regard the public-house as the chief recruit- 
ing office of the brothel. 

The starting and stopping station of public omnibuses 
should not be at public-houses, nor should these vehicles 
be labelled from these resorts. 

And publicans should not be allowed to sell drink to 
known habitual drunkards, nor to children. 

In a paper read some years ago in Liverpool, before the 
National Association for Promoting Amendment in the 
Laws relating to the Liquor Traffic, Canon Ellison quoted 
the following from a country journal: — "On Monday 
morning the magistrates of Liverpool had before them 

* The Church of England Temiperance Chronicle (February 17, 
1883) cites as follows from the Irish Temperance League Journal : — " The 
disestablishment and disendowment of ' Barmaids ' is a coming 
question. In many quarters there are signs of the steady advance- 
ment of a determination to do aw^ay with this blot upon English 
civilization. Why fair girls should be stationed behind bars for ten, 
twelve, and fourteen hours a day to bear the brunt of the meaningless 
compliments of the brainless boobies who pay so many twopences for 
the privilege, is more than passing strange. We put girls into 
taverns to sell drink to men, and men into shops to sell ribbons to 
girls ! " 

" ' I have heard publicans say they wished they had never entered 
the business, and would be glad to get out of it.' It was very difficult 
for barmen and barmaids to get out of it, as no one would employ 
them after they had been engaged in a public-house." — The Christian, 
March 6, 1883. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 369 

twenty boys and girls under the age of seventeen, all of 
whom had been found beastly drunk in the public streets 
on Sunday, and incapable of taking care of themselves. . . . 
Again, on a given Sunday 22,000 children were counted in 
the public-houses and beershops of Manchester ; and the 
clergyman, entering one of the beershops at one in the 
morning, found it full of boys and girls drinking." 

During late years juvenile intemperance is on the Instances of 
increase. As recently as last Christmas the papers reported tempeJance" 
many pathetic examples. In the Daily Neios (December cited by the 
28, 1883) appeared the following touching letter : — December'' 

1883. 
" GrlRLS AND DOGS, 

" Sir, — Your column of ' Greneral Home News ' of this 
morning has two items, which, as they are next to each 
other in grim satire, ought not to be passed over without 
public attention being called to them. The first is the 
horrible story from Birmingham of two little girls, nine 
and twelve years old respectively, together with a cousin 
ten years old, purchasing whisky, getting drunk, and 
almost killing themselves. The next is the story of three 
dogs at Castle Hedingham falling sick upon the road to the 
meet for fox-hunting, presumably having been poisoned. 
In this case 'great indignation was expressed by the 
public,' ' and the hunting for the day was postponed.' A 
reward of £50 has been offered for information which may 
bring the guilt home to the perpetrators. And what about 
the persons who supplied the drink to the three little 
girls ? Apparently no public indignation is expressed at 
the Birmingham outrage. What, after all, are three 
children more or less in our overcrowded towns ? The bay 
of the foxhound is pleasant and cheery, and we cannot 
afford to lose that music on the hillside. The bitter cry 
of the outcast is not sweet, and the sooner we quench it in 
the water of death the better. So, of course, £50 for the 
discovery of the miscreant who poisoned the dogs ; for 
the licensed trader who gave the children whisky, com- 
pensation when the time comes to shut up his dram-shop. 
We have received from Birmingham much political light 
and leading. We shall wait anxiously to hear her voice, 
in answer to the piteous wail of her three children 

2b 



370 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

poisoned upon the nativity o£ tlie BetUehem infant. — 
Youi's, etc. 

"Llewelyn D. Beyan. 

*' Highbury, N., December 27." 

By the Globe. A few days later the Globe, commenting on this wicked 
condition of things, said — 

" It is most painful to see, from the provincial police- 
court records of Christmastide crime, that juvenile intem- 
perance is increasing. Instances are reported all over 
the kingdom, and in some the tipplers were girls of 
tender years. Thus, at Birmingham, two little damsels, 
the one nine and the other twelve, opened their money- 
boxes one night, and invested the contents, 2s., in whisky. 
Being joined by a ten-year-old cousin, the three sat down, 
and then and there consumed every drop of the spirit. 
They were afterwards found in a helpless state of intoxica- 
tion, and the youngest still remains seriously ill. But a 
boys' drinking-bout at Warrington actually terminated in 
the death of one lad, aged twelve, from alcoholic poisoning. 
He, and three other youngsters, bought a pint of whisky 
and drank it out of an egg-cup, apparently in an undiluted 
state. We could multiply these shocking instances almost 
indefinitely, and the question therefore arises as to whether 
some more stringent restrictions should not be placed on 
the sale of stimulants to children. In the Warrington 
case, the publican declared that he would not have sold the 
whisky to the lads if he had thought they intended to 
drink it themselves. The coroner, nevertheless, censured 
him for his carelessness ; and never was reprimand more 
richly deserved. When children ask to be served with 
spirits, it rests wdth them to show that they are merely 
employed as messengers, and any publican who does not 
. exact full evidence on that head would not be a bit too 
heavily punished were his licence endorsed." 
Imprison- It ought to be practicable to pass a law preventing the 

m-oper possibility of such degradation as this. No physician of 

penalty for any standing denies that drink is a poison to the young, 
seiung^r^^ and no father, mother, or guardian worthy of the name 
giving drink y^riH allow minors undcr their charge to drink. It ought, in- 
deed, to be a prison offence for any full-grown person caught 
in the act of forcing or coaxing little ones to drink. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 371 

"There can be no question," sajs the Lancet (May, The Zancer* 
1883), "but that some change is urgently necessary ^p^^^^j^^^^" 
in relation to the facilities pablicly offered for juvenile 
drinking, and, consequently, juvenile inebriety. Even 
ordinarily observant persons must have noticed the in- 
creasing frequency of that most melancholy and humili- 
ating of street spectacles — a drunken child. A drunken 
woman is a deplorable presentment of human nature, 
but a drunken girl or boy is a more pitiful creature 
still. We have recently seen girls of apparently thirteen 
or fourteen years of age intoxicated with alarming fre- 
quency. Surely a short Act should be passed to render 
the supply of spirits, wine, or beer ' to be drunk on the 
premises,' by a boy or girl under sixteen years of a.ge, a 
misdemeanour. All would unite in expediting such a 
raeasure. At present, as it appears to us, even respectable 
publicans have no objection to supply drink to mere 
children, although they are conspicuously zealous in thrust- 
ing these poor creatures into the street as soon as the first 
indication of drunkenness is apparent." 

Unless the British Government soon attends to these 
evils, it seems likely that Russia will take precedence in 
reformatory legislation upon the drink question. Accord- 
ing to a letter from Odessa to Sir Wilfrid Lawson, dated 
March 21, 1884, and published in the Alliance News 
March 29, the new Russian project for regulating the sale 
of alcoholic liquors is thus quoted : 

" Clause II. enacts that any publican supplying drink 
to a person already intoxicated, or to young persons, is 
liable to a fine of 850 roubles (about £85), and to the 
deprivation of his licence or patent for three years, during 
which period he will not be allowed to occupy himself in 
any capacity whatever connected with the sale of liquors 
— not even as a waiter." * 

* The next two clauses are given as follows : — 
"Clause III. enacts that any publican supplying a person with 
such a quantity of drink as to make him irresponsible for his actions, 
and if such person, after leaving the premises, be robbed or injured 
by accident, the publican in addition to the fine imposed under 
clause II., shall make good any loss by robbery in the one case, or 
pay all medical expenses in the other. 

" Clause lY. declares that where a person through excessive 
drinking dies in a pubhc drinking-house, or if an intoxicated person 



372 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Early habits 
and home 
example 
largely re- 
sponsible for 
the preva- 
lence of this 
vice among 
adults. 



Sir William 
Armstrong 
on pro- 
hibition of 
the propaga- 
tion of 
poverty and 
vice. 



Dr. Norman 
Kerr and the 
Dalrymple 
Home. 



There is no doubt that the amount of drunkenness we 
see among all classes of people is in a very great degree the 
outcome of habits formed in earliest youth. The use of 
alcohol is associated with home scenes around the parents' 
table and with social pleasures ; it is carried on by the very 
passivity and plasticity of man's moral development, np 
through the whole period of physical construction and 
ripening, until it is fixed in and part of his maturity. 

§ 87. Another indirect prohibitory measure that may 
become practicable applies to the prevention, by law, of pro- 
pagation of the race by habitual drunkards. Why should 
such a suggestion as this be adjudged out of the pale of 
consideration ? Laws are made and executed, by which life 
itself and all that is meant by individuality are under 
given circumstances deemed forfeit. Why should there be 
no laws, adequately conceived and effected, which might 
practically abrogate the death-penalty by guarding the 
doors of life ? In an address to the Elswick Works Insti- 
tute, August 8, 1883, Sir William Armstrong made the 
following statement : — " The rapid growth of population is 
adverse to moral development, and, by increasing com- 
petition, for instance, tends to increase poverty. A crisis 
mnst apparently come when further multiplication must be 
controlled by legislation, and the violation of liberty may 
be involved." 

What Sir William Armstrong thus impressively says 
of the propagation of poverty is certainly applicable to 
the propagation of habitual drunkards, even without dwell- 
ing on the point that poverty and drunkenness produce 
each other. 

§ 88. The brave efforts of Dr. Norman Kerr for the 
realization and extension of the Dalrymple Home for the 
cure of habitual drunkards, deserve encouragement and 
support. But the authority of the management should also 
be enlarged. The chief support of this or any similar insti- 
tution should devolve upon the State. Any one who had 
a respectable medical certificate that he was an eligible 
applicant, should be admitted, and the satisfactory evidence 

lose his life in any drunken brawl on the premises or after leaving 
(cases, unhappily, not uncommon in Russia), the publican shall suffer 
two years' imprisonment and make a suitable provision for the wife 
and family or dependent relatives of the deceased." 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 373 

of a person's being an habitual drunkard sliould make bis 
removal to an asylum for habitual drunkards as compul- 
sory as would be the removal of a proved lunatic to an 
asylum for the insane, and State supervision should be as 
strict as over our prisons and insane asylums — absolute 
cure being the condition on which an inmate should be 
allowed to re-enter the world. 

Those who were present at the inauguration of the 
Dalrymple Home (October 29, 1883), and heard the earnest 
addresses by Sir Charles Tupper, ex-premier of Nova Scotia, 
who instanced the model management and grand success 
of such institutions in America;* of Sir Spencer Wells, 

* These details are from the Temperance Record (November 1, 
1883) : " The Hon. Conrad Dillon, who has recently returned from a 
rapid trip through the United States, has favoured us with a few 
notes of visits paid by him to four institutions for the reclamation 
and reformation of the victims of strong drink. 

" At San Francisco, California, the Inebriates' Home is under the 
management of a body of trustees who are recognized by the State, 
and have power to receive and detain persons for certain periods. 
The home is situated in a pleasant part of the city, and has accommo- 
dation for about sixty or seventy inmates, about two-thh"ds of whom 
are males. Many of the patients go voluntarily, but others are com- 
mitted under a judge's order for a term of twenty days. Dr. R. H. 
McDonald, the president of the Pacific Bank, an active temperance 
reformer and philanthropist, is the chairman of the trustees, who are 
assisted by Dr. Jewell, the resident physician. The patients are 
detained for a few days in the hospital, after which they have access 
to the reading-rooms and other more cheerful parts of the building. 
The women's department is of course entirely separated, though under 
the same roof. No report is published of the home, and every effort 
is made to avoid publicity, which might deter sufferers from taking 
advantage of it. 

" The Washingtonian Home of Chicago is somewhat larger. Here 
the average number of inmates (all male) is about eighty, the total 
number of admissions last year having been six hundred and seventy, 
of whom one hundred and two were police-court cases. The com- 
mittee of directors have power to admit and detain prisoners com- 
mitted to the bridewell for " intemperance, drunkenness, or any 
misdemeanour caused thereby," for the term of their sentence. The 
patients are required to contribute according to their means, though 
many are admitted free. On the whole nearly sixty per cent, of the 
expense is contributed by the inmates. The special feature of this 
home is that an attcinpt is made not merely to recover, but to educate 
the patients. During the first fortnight, as a rule, they remain in the 
home, and attend a series of lectures on physiology, especially relating 
to the effects of narcotics and stimulants on the various organs, as 



374 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

president Boyal College of Surgeons ; Dr. Hare, president 
of tlie Metropolitan Brancli of the British Medical Associa- 
tion, and other well-known workers in the temperance 
cause, cannot help feeling that it is the great duty of 
Englishmen to urge adequate legislation on this subject. 

well as the effect of alcohol on the moral affections and passions. Pro- 
fessor Wilkins, the superintendent, whose heart and soul is in the 
work, soon makes an impression on all who have the slightest desire 
to reform, and, by his kindly sympathy and advice, revives hope in 
the breast of many a poor victim. If sufficient progress is made at 
the end of a fortnight, the patient goes out during the day to his 
employment, returning for meals, and thus gradually slides back to 
his place in the outer world. The experience meeting on Sunday 
evening is a serious affair, and though the histories related are often 
sad, many successful cases starting from declarations made there in 
years gone by, testify to the value of the work. Friends of the 
inmates and former inmates are welcome at the meetings. 

" The Martha Washington Home, which is situated about six miles 
out of the town, is conducted by the same board, and though only 
opened recently, gives promise of that reward which always attends 
the untiring efforts of thoroughly earnest workers, guided alone by the 
highest religious motives. The money raised by licences in Chicago 
and Cooks County, amounting to about £1,200 a year, is entirely 
devoted to these two institutions. 

" The New York Christian Home for Intemperate Men, which was 
till lately presided over by the Hon. W. E. Dodge, has recently moved 
into a fine new building at the corner of the Madison Avenue, and 
86th Street. Here the committee have power to receive and detain 
inebriate men who enter voluntarily for a period not exceeding sixty 
days, and every effort is made during that time for their " physical, 
social, mental, and spiritual" improvement. The institution claims 
that of the nine hundred men who have been received since 1877, a 
majority give every evidence of living consistent lives. This result 
is attributed to the prominent position given to religious instruction 
and exhortation, and, indeed, unless patients express a desire to 
reform they are not allowed to remain. 

" The value of these homes cannot be accurately estimated, for 
many who have benefited most by them follow the example of the 
- nine lepers. That the work is of great practical value cannot be 
doubted, though many will avail themselves of the relief and then 
return straight to their old habits. The stay in all is too limited for 
much good to be expected in old cases, but the easy access and 
prospect of returning quickly to the world no doubt induces many to 
avail themselves of the treatment at an earlier stage than they would 
if the seclusion were longer. The facility for a recommencement of 
work which is impossible in a country home, is an important feature, 
as well as the opportunities offered for joining temperance societies 
before throwing off the restraint of the home." 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 375 

In his report (Marcli, 1884, about four montlis after 
its inauguration) on the working of the Dalrjmple Home, 
made to the Medical Temperance Association, Dr. Kerr 
said — • 

" Without an exception, all whose terms have as yet 
expired have applied to be allowed to remain longer — as 
long-, in fact, as financial or business considerations will 
admit of. 

" With all this success, there is one regret, the necessity 
of refusing many applications for admission. If the sum 
of £2,500 were forthcoming, accommodation for twelve 
more patients could be added, and we rely on the prompt 
and liberal support of the Christian and philanthropic 
public. Were the committee supplied with adequate funds, 
they would gladly establish a Home for Females, and a 
third Home for Habitual Drunkards of very limited 
means. To free the existing Dalrymple Home from debt 
£2,000 is still needed." 

Dr. Thomas Hawksley is quoted in Church of England d,.. Thomas 
Temperance Society (October 6), as saying : — "It is useless Hawksley on 
to tell these fallen and unhappy ones of the virtues of habitual 
temperance ; their consciences are dead, a^nd an impervious drunkards, 
and insatiable demon has possession of them. You might 
as well attempt to reason with a hopeless lunatic. Until 
the laws of the country treat this form of madness like 
other lunacy, and deal with it by a sulBBciently long sus- 
tained coercion, so long, it is to be hoped, there will be 
found a self-denying and heroic band of men and women 
who, by a vow of total abstinence faithfully carried out, 
show the right way to their weaker brethren, and demon- 
strate how perfectly health and happiness may be sustained 
without the smallest aid from agencies which to so great 
an extent are proved to be the facilis descensus to all the 
other sins and crimes of our fallen moral nature." 

The Church of England Temperance Chronicle, ISTovember The Lambeth 
15, 1883, says :— " At a meeting of the Lambeth Board of Itl^^-^on 
Guardians on Wednesday, it was moved — ' That this board, the necessity 
being deeply impressed with the necessity of provision the^ Habitual 
being made for the more stringent dealing with habitual Drunkard's 
drunkards, do -memorialize the Local Government Board 
to take such steps as will lead to the law being so amended 
as to give power to local authorities or boards of guardians 



376 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

to establish and maintain inebriate retreats, eitber in con- 
nection witb existing workbouses or asylums or in separate 
establisbments, as may be tbougbt most desirable ; and, 
further, that power be given to magistrates to commit 
habitual drunkards to snch retreats with or without their' 
consent, provision being made for the recovery of the cost 
of their maintenance when it is ascertained that persons 
restrained have means for their own support, or that there 
are relatives or guardians who under the existing law are 
liable and able, wholly or partially, to maintain them.' — 
The motion was carried, there being only one dissentient." 
The need of §89- O^iG powerful and comprehensive initiatory mea- 

reiat^^*^^"^^ sure for optional and prohibitory legislation, for which the 
view of times seem ripe, is that of the establishment of international 
drink'k^is- I'^lations on the drink question. There can be no doubt 
lation. ° that for England to inaugurate a system of drastic liquor 
legislation without such an understanding with other 
countries would seriously affect international commercial 
relations ; i.e., if those countries in which such legislation 
would most interfere with the existing order of things, had 
not first been taken into England's confidence and invited 
to co-operate, and had their just demands considered and, 
so far as possible, satisfied. 

But having faithfully made these efforts, England 

ought then to carry her scheme into effect. And there 

should be no question of compensation for direct losses to 

other countries, and on exactly the same grounds and for 

the same reasons that no compensation — except such as 

lies in special opportunities in proper fields of commerce 

— ought to be made to dispossessed publicans. For 

if publicans within the country are compensated, then, 

logically and upon the same scale, ought compensation to 

be extended to foreign traders. 

The need of Indeed, there are certain measures w^hich only an 

agreement" ' international agreement would make possible, such, for 

for the gene- instance, as the right to suppress the liquor traffic at sea. 

sion of liquor In the International Conference at the Hague in 1881, the 

seaf^*^"^*^^ fearful consequences in shipwrecks and loss of life due to 

this cause were pointed out, and a resolution passed to try 

and induce the respective governments to put an end to 

■ that form of the traffic ; and it was recently stated by a 

correspondent of the Liverpool Journal of Commerce that 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 377 

the Britisli Government are taking steps to put an end to 
this traflB.c on the ]^orth Sea, and to that end would seek 
to arrive at an understanding with the other countries who 
are parties to the North Sea Fisheries Convention . 

International exchange of information as to the various 
legislative measures taken, the commissioning of official 
representatives to international conferences on the drink 
question, and other steps of a cognate nature, would all be 
means for promoting the good work of bringing the nations 
into a closer bond of common fellowship, and be, at the 
same time, tending to bring about a most healthful spirit 
of international emulation for good legislation. 

§ 90. Alcohol is so potent and subtle a destroyer of The need for 

,11. tj_- ' T xi 1 the establisb- 

the best qualities m man and the race; so much more mentofa 
formidable and complex in its effects than is any other permanent 
foe to man's physical, mental, and moral health — to his commission 
happiness and usefulness on earth — that this Government ['j^^Q^ti^e'^^ 
ought to insist upon the establishment of a permanent whole 
national commission, in every way fitted and provided aicohoi'and 
with the necessary means for investigating the whole man. 
question of alcohol and man. 

It is a far greater evil than that of poverty, and, in 
fact, as was pointed out in chapter x., poverty would 
hardly prove a considerable problem to a sober nation, and 
even if it were, a sober nation would be amply adequate 
to cope with it. If the Royal Commission for Housing the 
Poor wall study the cause, the all-promoting cause, of 
poverty — drink — and probe and expose this source of evil 
in a thorough conscientious manner, then will its work 
be, and deserve to be, blessed indeed, and its members will 
reap for themselves the rich harvest of the people's con- 
fidence and gratitude. But this should only precede, not 
take the place of, the establishment of a permanent official 
commission of inquiry into the whole drink question, 
which should annually issue a full report of the results of 
its investigation, the report to be sold at cost price all 
over the land. The commission established in Switzerland 
to this end might furnish suggestions for formation, 
character, duties, responsibilities, etc. 

Among reforms needed to facilitate effective legislation 
generally would be that of an enactment by which members 
directly interested in any legislation should de facto be 



378 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

disqualified from voting in such cases ; just as much, and 
for precisely the same reasons, that interested parties are 
excluded from juries. 

§ 91. Legislative and social efforts — essential fore- 
runners of direct temperance legislation — have been for 
some years continually increasing in number. One of 
these, known as the coffee tavern and street stall move- 
ment, has already become very popular.* 

* It is of the utmost importance that the public mind should be 
disabused of the idea that the various non-alcoholic drinks are 
substitutes for alcohol, or that any such substitutes are required. 
Alcohol is a poison through and through; the real substitutes for it 
are also poisons, viz., ethers, chloral, etc. The Son of Temperance 
(April, 1884) makes these pertinent remarks — 

" When a man who sticks to alcohol sees an abstainer drinking a 
'done or an 'ade, he naturally concludes that the whole question at 
issue is simply one as to the sort of tipple. The alcoholist declares 
his weak wine to be no viler a compound nor more hurtful than the 
stuff drunk as a substitute by the abstainer. And in this particular 
he is not very far wrong, for some of the so-called ' teetotal drinks ' 
are the grossest of frauds upon the stomach as well as the pocket. 
Drinking them thus confuses the issue, and makes it a question of 
the sort of tipple, rather than one of the disuse of a worse than 
worthless drink. It does even more. The habit of using a substitute 
gives an impression that there is a natural want. Taste and expense 
then become important factors. If there be no saving in the latter 
the former prevails, and a lapse is the consequence. Many a man 
who has by his own habits thus obscured the issue has been lost to 
the movement. Then, again, quite apart from economic and physical 
considerations, there is the habit of drinking for the mere purpose of 
drinking. Substitutes perpetuate this ridiculous and pernicious 
habit. What greater folly can be conceived than liquoring- up at all 
hours of the day, and fgr every possible excuse ! Substitutes supply 
the means, and the result is a waste of time and energy by continuance 
in the old practice." 

Among healthful invigorating drinks, besides water, are : Hot milk, 
of which the Louisville Medical Neivs (November 10, 1883) says, 
- " Milk that is heated too much above 100° Fahr. loses, for the time, 
a degree of its sweetness and density ; but no one fatigued by over- 
exertion of body or mind who has ever experienced the reviving 
influence of a tumbler of this beverage as hot as it can be sipped, 
will willingly forego a resort to it because of its having been rendered 
somewhat less acceptable to the palate. The promptness with which 
its cordial influence is felt is indeed surprising. Some portions seem 
to be digested and appropriated almost immediately ; and many who 
fancy that they need alcoholic stimulants when exhausted by labour 
of brain or body, will find in this simple draught an equivalent that 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 379 

The Briiisli coffee tavern temperance movement seems The origin 
to have had its origin in the novel and very noble efforts J^Jment^'of 

temperance 
will be as abuBdantly satisfying and more enduring in its effects." coffee- 
And. oatmeal drinh, the late Dr. Parkes' receipt for which is given pw[and" 
here as found in the Church of England Temperance Chronicle (June Their 
9, 1883) : " The proportions are Jib. of oatmeal to two or three quarts character 
of water, according to the heat of the day, and the work and th.irst ; f^i'L J^g^' 
it should, be well boiled, and then an ounce or one and a half ounces 
of brown sugar added. If you iind it thicker than you like, add three 
quarts of water. Before drinking it shake up the oatmeal well 
through the liquid. In summer drink this cold ; in winter hot. You 
will find this not only quenches thirst, but will give you more strength 
and endurance than any other drink. If you cannot boil it, you can 
take a little oatmeal mixed with cold water and sugar, but this is not 
so good ; always boil it if you can. If at any time you have to make 
a very long day, as in harvest, and cannot stop for meals, increase 
the oatmeal to Jib. or even fib., and the water to three quarts if you 
are likely to be very thirsty. If you cannot get oatmeal, wheat-flour 
will do, but not quite so well. Those who tried this recipe last year 
found that they could get through more work than when using beer, 
and were stronger and healthier at the end of the harvest. Cold tea 
and skim milk are also found to be better than beer, but not equal to 
the oatmeal drink." 

An excellent promoter of easy digestion is malt extract. Barley 
possesses such an abundance of diastase or starch-digesting principle, 
that malt or an extract from it, if properly prepared, is not only 
nutritive by reason of the malt sugar, dextrine, and phosphates 
which it contains, but highly digestive of other starchy foods also, as 
bread, potatoes, etc. Many persons who are aware of the nutritive 
and digestive properties of barley malt, resort to beer and other 
fermented alcoholic liquors, prepared in part from malt, as the most 
available or proper preparation. But this course is a most mistaken 
one ; for in the first place, in the process of boiling the sweet wort 
or infusion of malt for the manufacture of beer, all the digestive 
properties are entirely destroyed, as diastase is rendered quite inert 
by a temperature of 130°. Therefore beer possesses no ability to aid 
digestion, and the alcohol it contains we know to be a retarder of 
digestion. Secondly, in brewing, the nutritive principles are almost 
all sacrificed by fermentation for the production of alcohol. We 
find, therefore, in beer hardly anything whatever of the nutritive 
or digestive beneficial properties of malt, but simply a solution of 
weak alcohol in a great deal of water, with such other additions as 
brewers chose to make for the sake of colour or flavour. In order to 
preserve the nutritive value of malt. Prof. Baron Liebig originated 
the idea of evaporating the infusion or sweet wort to the consistency 
of a syrup, in whirh condition it would keep indefinitely. This pro- 
cess, however, being conducted in an open pan or kettle, and by 
boiling, the digestive principle was entirely destroyed. By the Kepler 
process, the evaporation of sweet wort is conducted at a low temper- 



380 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The promi- 
nent part 
taken by 
Mrs. George 
Bayly in this 
movement. 



Eeasons for 
the poor 
results of 
the coffee 
taverns in 
London. 



of Captain and Mrs. George Bayly. In 1853 Mrs. Bayly 
had started a series of Mothers' Meetings in N'otting Dale 
and its vicinity for the purpose of rendering mutual assist- 
ance in saving young men from the drink-shops, and 
helping those women who suffered because of a drinking 
husband or father. 

It was finally resolved at these meetings that steps 
must be taken to reach the drinking men directly, and 
in relation to this. Captain Bayly, writing to me, April 11, 
1884, says, " On the 1st of February, 1860, Mrs. Bayly 
invited sixteen of the most notorious drunkards in the 
Potteries (Kensington) to tea and spend the evening, 
the result being that five signed the pledge, and in the 
course of the year more than one hundred signed. ... At 
a meeting a man said, 'We want a public-house without 
the drink ! ' and on March 16th one was opened and called 
the 'Workmen's Hall.'" 

The " public-house without the drink " became the 
coffee taverns of which, particularly during the last two or 
three years, a great number have been established all over 
the land, owing chiefly to the exertions of the Church of 
England Temperance Society. That great good has been 
accomplished through the agency of these taverns and 
stalls cannot be doubted; but while in Leeds and other 
places the coffee taverns pay fifteen or twenty per cent., 
in London the results have been most unsatisfactory, 
because of the poor furnishing and wretched management 
of these places. 

At a meeting (March 15, 1884) of the relieving officers 

atnre in vacuo, not exceeding 100° Fahr., so that the diastase is fully 
preserved; and in this prodact all the valuable properties of malt 
are preserved in concentrated form, viz., diastase, dextrine, malt 
sugar, phosphates, and albumenoids, all highly necessary to the 
human physical growth, and health. The Medical Press and Circular 
(London), in reporting on this subject, says that the Kepler Extract 
of Malt is reliable, and is manufactured in such careful manner as to 
ensure the preservation of its valuable constituents. It is very 
delicious to the taste, and has been found by analysis to be exceedingly 
rich in diastase, and consequently is a valuable digestive agent. The 
Lancet reports upon the Kepler extract as the best known, and in 
this country (England) the largest used extract of malt. It is as 
distinct an advance in therapeutics as was the introduction of cod- 
liver oil. Used with milk, with water, or with soda-water, it makes a 
nourishing, refresbing drink. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 381 

of metropolitaa unions invited by the committee of tlie 
National Temperance League, " Mr. Birch, for sixteen 
years a relieving officer in the Holbom union district, said 
he thought that drink produced three-fourths ol the 
pauperism with which they had to contend. . . . He 
sincerely hoped that the friends of temperance would 
endeavour to find some really palatable drink to take the 
people off intoxicating beverages. As to the coffee taverns, 
the stuff they sold was not worth drinking. The one they 
opened in Gray's Inn Road sold articles which the British 
working man could not be expected to consume, and it was 
now shut up. ... A relieving officer from the Whitechapel 
district said he was glad the first speaker had put the 
estimate of the drink-caused pauperism at three-fourths. 
It was a low estimate, but it was one with which they 
could all agree. Had it been put as high as nine-tenths, 
he personally should not have objected to it. . . . Mr. 
Wright said that he had an all-round experience of 
London, and could testify that the great cause of pauperism 
was drink. Another cause was the wretched homes iu 
which the people lived, making the public-house the only 
bit of comfort they could get. His experience of the coffee 
tavern was anything but to their credit. The articles sold 
at them were so bad that he did not wonder at people 
forsaking them for the public-house. There was one man 
doing an immense and successful work for temperance, and 
that was Mr. Lockhart. The viands he sold were worth 
the money he charged for them, and his establishments 
were greatly appreciated by the poor. Let the coffee 
taverns imitate his method, and they would succeed." * 

Hecently a number of interesting letters on this subject 
have appeared in the Daily Chronicle, on which, in its 
editorial, April 21, 1884, it comments as follows: — 

"That the Coffee Palace Movement, in the metropolis The Daily 
at least, has not been so brilliantly successful as its pro- Se^ana^-e- 
moters anticipated must, we fear, be admitted. We have ment of these 
received numbers of letters fi^om correspondents complain- ments'.^^" 
ing of the wretched accommodation provided and the 
doubtful quality of the refreshments supplied at many of 
the establishments described as coffee palaces. ... It would 

* Temperance Record, March 20, 1884. 



882 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

be unfair to deny tliat some of these temperance restaurants 
are admirably conducted and well-found in every respect, 
but, as a rule, the coffee palaces are scarcely places to 
•whicb. a philosopher would resort in order to find justifi- 
cation for taking a cheerful view of the problem of 
existence. When we remember that the great object 
of the coifee palace movement was to provide counter 
attractions to the public-houses, and thus to mark tbe 
commencement of a new era in tlie history of social 
recreation and enjoyment, we cannot admit that the object 
has been fulfilled. The muddy-brown liquid sold for coffee 
at the coffee palaces is not calculated to impress people 
with the advantages of a temperance dietary. If the 
British workman is to be persuaded to give up his beer, he 
must be offered something better than a washy solution of 
horse-beans, rotten dates, and burnt figs. Genuine coffee 
can be brewed for the price charged for the adulterated 
rubbish which, if our numerous correspondents are to be 
believed, is supplied at most of the coffee palaces. We 
call attention to this matter in the interests of temperance, 
and should be sorry to say anything detrimental to the 
cause. We do not see how it is to prosper with the 
assistance of adulteration. Coffee palaces cannot be suc- 
cessful unless they supply the public with coffee. We 
trust, therefore, that the promoters of the temperance 
movement will endeavour to put a stop to the distribution 
of the objectionable stuff at present sold at their 'palaces.' 
The buildings themselves, too, would be better adapted to 
the purpose for which they were designed if an appearance 
of cheerfulness, comfort, and cleanliness were imparted to 
them." 

To be completely successful, English coffee taverns 
must supply the best coffee, tea, etc., at the cheapest 
rates, and to enable them to do this, the duty on tea, 
coffee, cocoa, etc., ought to be removed, and Java coffee 
should be as easily obtainable as any other kinds. The 
ladies who superintend these taverns should thoroughly 
understand how to prepare the drinks ; a book of com- 
plaint of management should be on hand at all taverns, in 
which complaints could be entered and subscribed to by 
witnesses or partners in the grievance. Friends and sup- 
porters of temperance should take a personal interest in 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 383 

the attractiveness, propriety, excellence, and cheapness of 
such taverns, securing for them the best bread and butter, 
cold meats, cheese, coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, milk, etc. 

They should have neat reading-rooms, with the prin- 
cipal daily and weekly papers, magazines, and sterling light 
and simple literature in plenty, not simply such books as 
can be got at cheapest, at an auction, or given by some- 
body without care or selection ; on the contrary, it should 
be an absolute condition that none but thoroughly whole- 
some books should be admitted, i.e., upon the decision of 
a competent committee. There should be special meetings 
and gatherings so arranged as to secure not only social 
entertainment, but strengthening of the main purpose 
which brings them together/* For unless the coffee tavern 
outbids the conveniences of the liquor shop, it will be 
beaten in the race. 

But in order to meet the great requirement of the time Suggestion 
— a substitute for the public-house ; a substitute not in the [^e coffee-" 
sense of equivalent, but a substitute in the sense that it tavern pro- 
shall displace and victoriously supplant the public-house onhT steam 
— why should not the coffee-tavern system be merged in. kitchen. 
a more comprehensive plan, by which not only healthy 
drinks, good amusements, and wholesome literature, but 
the entire physiological needs of man could be amply and 
cheaply supplied ? 

One of the first efforts in this direction was made at First efforts 
the close of the last century by the famous scientist and of th^^st?am 
philanthropist, Count Rumford, who invented the well- kitchen 
known Rumford soup. The institutions supplying the on the conti- 
Rumford soup, during 1818, and again in 1846, 1847, and Jj^g^Lj^^ 
1848, did much to save Germany from the horrors of a Morgen- 

stern's steam 

* The Ec/io (October 11, 1883) mentions a good movement in Berlin, 
behalf of boys, as follows : — 

" To-morrow a meeting will be held at the Mansion House to 
promote the formation of a Working Lads' Institute for East London. 
The object is to promote the welfare of the working lads of the 
Metropolis by establishing in those neighbourhoods where large 
numbers are employed or reside, institutes where such youths may 
profitably spend their evening hours, and so be saved from tempta- 
tions and snares Or the streets, the public-houses, music-halls, and 
' penny gaffs.' In connection with each institute will be provided 
healthy recreation, good and useful reading, and the means of 
educational and moral improvement." 



384 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. L. 0. 

Smith's 
steam 
kitchen in 
Stockholm, 
and his own 
account of 
its import- 
ance and 
work. 



general famine. In 1866 Mrs. Lina Morge n stern * built 
her large and now famons steam kitchen, where all food 
is prepared scrnpulonslj in accordance with the highest 
sanitary and scientific methods, is served daintily on the 
premises, or sent to order, and in all cases sold, at the 
cheapest possible rates. This experiment is now being tried 
in Stockholm with marked success by Mr. L. 0. Smith, 
the " ex-Brandy King " of Sweden, and there can be no 
donbt of its success, if properly introduced, in England. 

Co-operation is the watchword of the hour. We practise 
it with advantage in commercial, industrial, and agricul- 
tural pursuits, why should not co-operative food prepara- 
tion and sale prove successful ? Indeed, so far as the 
masses of both head and hand labourers are concerned, 
there is every reason to expect that such co-operation will 
prove in almost every respect more advantageous than any 
other form. 

I have not the space here for treating this great 
question in detail, I can only throw out a hint or two, and 
cite briefly from Mr. Smith's experiences. 

It is impossible that food should be prepared either as 
well or as cheaply in the labourer's home, with its generally 
imperfect domestic facilities, as it could be in a large steam 
kitchen specially and skilfully constructed, and stocked 
with utensil and material for feeding thousands of persons. 
And while poor and badly cooked food notably prepares 
the stomach to crave for strong drink, nutritious, easily 
digested, and well-cooked food as notably serves to render 
the system less tolerant of strong drink, and good health 
means temperate desires, better work, and that self-reliance 
which makes a man able to take proper care of himself, 
and be helpful to others also. From Mr. Smith's views of 
the working and results of the steam kitchen system, as 
reported in the Fall Mall Gazette (April 3, 1884), I make 
the following quotations : — 

" Of the expenditure of a working man, 15 per cent, 
only goes in house-rent, while 60 per cent, goes in food. 
Therefore, if you provide every working man with a free 
house for ever, the effect is only equal to saving him 

* Die Volkskiicken WirtschaftlicJie Anstalten fur lillige Tiahrende 
u SchmaclhafteMassenspeisung im Krieg u Frieden. Lina Morgenstern. 
Berlin, 1883. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 385 

15 per cent, of his wages. Bufc if you can make a radical 
reformation in his food, you have a much greater margin 
to play upon. If you could provide him with food twice 
as nourishing as that which he gets now, so that he only 
needs to buy half as much of it, or if you give him as 
much food as he gets at present at half the price, you save 
him at one stroke 30 per cent, of his wages, or twice as 
much as the whole of his house-rent. And it can be 
done." * 

As to the best system of cooking, Mr. Smith says : 
" I have examined almost every system of cooking that 
is known to civilized man ; and I have now come to the 
conclusion that no system is so good as that of cooking by 
steam water bath, so economical, so efficient. In cooking 
the great thing is temperature ; and by this means it is 
possible either to roast or to boil each description of food 
at the exact degree of the thermometer that is necessary. 
The system at present in use in the barracks of the German 
army is by far the best. I have bought up tbe patent for 
Norway and Sweden ; and before long I expect to have 
the machines in working order in every town in the whole 
country. You may think this is a simple matter ; but let 
me tell you the results. In Sweden the working man, at 
the ordinary cook-shops, will pay Is. 2d. a day for three 
meals for himself. At my kitchen I supply him with three 
meals a day for 8d., making a saving of 40 per cent., and 
for this 8d. I supply much better food — the very best that 
can be bought anywhere, and much better cooked than you 
can get in any hotels in London. I can do this and make 
a profit at it — a profit of 2^d. on each day. I charge them 
more than cost price in order that the profits may accumu- 
late for establishing other kitchens in other places, and for 
furnishing the kitchens with adjuncts in the shape of music- 
halls, libraries, etc., while a part of the accumulated profit 
is devoted to providing pensions for members in old age." 

And as to the management, he adds : 

" Come to Stockholm, and I will show you my kitchen 
in working order. Every Saturday night those who wish 
to avail themselves of the kitchen must pay an advance 

* In an Open Letter to the Worlcing Men of Sweden, Mr. Smitli 
says he even thinks that as much as 40 per cent, of the present costs 
of food might thus be saved. 

2o 



386 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Pure water 
the greatest 
essential for 
life and 
health. 

Mr Thomas 
Tryon on 
water (1697). 



for the whole seven days. They receive twenty-one tickets, 
one for each meal. They can give them, away if they 
please, but they are never wasted. We know, therefore, 
exactly to one meal how many will be required through 
the week. At Berlin, where there is a society of charitable 
ladies who supply cheap food for the people, they supply 
it to any one who comes, and, as a consequence, they never 
know whether their demand will be great or small, and 
they have to eat up one day what is left over from another. 
Under my system nothing is left over. We know exactly 
what is wanted, and it is cooked fresh when it is wanted. 
The people can either come and eat their meal at the 
kitchen, or they can bring it home in vessels which keep 
it warm. I send out meals to factories and workshops in 
vessels so constructed that they keep warm for hours. 
There is nothing wasted, and the food is apportioned, 
according to the season of the year, on the most scientific 
principles. Care is taken to provide exactly the number 
of grammes of fatty matter and albumen — in winter more 
fat, in spring more albumen ; but the correct proportion is 
always maintained. We have all varieties of food, each 
cooked in its own proper way to perfection. In the course 
of the year we have as many as sixty menus from which 
people can take their choice. The economy resulting is 
surprising. The waste of separate fires and separate 
kitchen rooms is appalling. I undertake to provide any 
family of man, wife, and two children, who will pay me 
the rent of their kitchen and the cost of their fuel, with 
dinner all the year round for nothing ! " 

During his recent visit to London, Mr. Smith told me 
that by next autumn he expected to have ten large steam 
kitchens at work in Stockholm. 

§ 92. A remedial measure of the very first importance, 
in which State, Church, society, and the individual ought to 
co-operate, is that of procuring for all localities an abundant, 
permanent, free supply of fresh, pure, sparkling water. 

" Spring or fountain water," says Thomas Tryon, in his 
Way to save Wealth (London, 1697), "is the most whole- 
some and sweet of all drinks. A sober man coming to 
a feast eats his meat (food) with six times more delight 
than the other, because he brings an exact palate to taste, 
and a clean and sharp stomach to entertain it." 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 387 

In An Essay on Health and Long Life (London, 1725), Dr. George 
Dr. George Clieyne says — " Without peradventure water ^"^^5^^^^ 
was the primitive original drink, and happy had it been (1725). 
for the race of mankind if other mixed and artificial liquors 
had never been invented. Water alone is sufficient and 
effectual for all the purposes of human wants in drink. 
Common sense will tell us that the purest and thinnest 
water is fittest to circulate through tubes so infinitely 
small as some in animal bodies are, and even that it alone 
will nourish plants and bring them to perfection." 

In deahng with the physiological effects of alcohol we 
saw how overwhelming is the bodily need of water, that 
water is the first, food the second, necessity. And there- 
fore it may justly be claimed that for health and normal 
living, the supply of pure water is as necessary as the 
supply of pure food. 

Some cities — Antwerp among others — have recently Water 
secured this priceless boon for the inhabitants, and the Antvrap. ^'^ 
laws for the water supply in Antwerp provide that in 
whatsoever house the landlord has not complied with this 
ordinance, he can be legally compelled at once to do so. 
As to London, for upwards of thirty years there has been The agita- 
a constant agitation in this direction, though it has not as pure water 
yet met with complete success. Early in 1859 an associa- supply in 
tion for the erection of drinking- fountains was formed in during the 
London by Lord John Russell, and in April of that year it lasttwenty- 

-uij-^j-j--* five years, 

held an important meeting.* 

Lord Shaftesbury and the chairman. Lord Carlisle, 
were the most prominent speakers. The latter said he 
thought "all present would agree with him" that "gin- 
palaces and beer-houses were the most besetting evils of 
London, and that drinking-fountains would in some measure 
alleviate these." 

Earl Shaftesbury said that pure water was an im- 
perative need ; they were to recollect the general condition 
of the working classes in this respect. The water was 
generally received into butts which stood in the outer yard, 

* The first fountain, near St. Sepulchre's Church, in Skinner Street, 
was built the same month. In June, 1862, the magnificent fountain 
in Yictoria Park was inaugurated by its donor, Miss — now Baroness 
— Burdett-Coutts. Since then between three and four hundred have 
been erected all over the metropolis. 



388 THE FOUNDATION" OF DEATH. 

where they absorbed all the foul air and gases that passed 
over them.* 

During last year an agitation of a more effective 

character, and which gives promise of ultimate success, 

A writer in called forth the following^ letter to the Pall Mall Gazette 

Gazette oa (AugUSt IS, 1883) : 

the present 

water supply " SiE, — Fivc of the metropolitan water companies draw 
m London, their Supplies from the Thames above Teddington Lock. 
The average daily flow of the river at the intakes during 
August is 500,000,000 gallons. These companies abstract 
68,000,000 gallons per day — that is, a little more than one 
eighth of the total flow. They possess power to abstract 
110,000,000 gallons per day. On the drainage area of the 
Thames there dwell 900,000 people (including 200,000 in 
towns of upwards of 2,000 inhabitants), and upon it there 
live 60,000 horses, 160,000 cattle, 900,000 sheep, and 
120,000 pigs. Their sewage and refuse pass into the 
Thames, either directly or indirectly. The theory that 
polluted river-water purifies itself in its flow has been 
proved to be false. After filtration this water is sent to 
London. It is considered very satisfactory when filtration 
removes 28 per cent, of the organic impurities, leaving 
72 per cent, to be supplied in solution to the consumer. 
The companies derive a gross annual income of £750,000 
for this supply. ■ The volume of the flow in the river is 
fairly constant, but the amounts of its pollution and of the 
quantities abstracted daily are necessarily increasing ones. 
The whole of these figures are taken from Bluebooks, and, 
if disputed, the reference for each will be given. 

"If it were possible for these companies to have a 
reservoir containing 68,000,000 gallons of absolutely pure 
water, and into it were allowed to go the contents of 
water-closets, household slops, and manufacturing refuse 
of 112,500 people, in the same proportion in which they 
respectively enter the Thames at the present time, and in 
addition as much of the manure of 7,500 horses, 20,000 
cattle, 112,500 sheep, and 15,000 pigs, as could find its 
way there, and if 28 per cent., or even 50 per cent., of 

* Recent inquiries into tlie circumstances of the London poor 
have shown that the condition of things deprecated in 1859, have not 
been much improved in some of the London slums to-day. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 889 

these organic impurities were removed by filtration, is 
tliere any householder in London who would use it for 
drinking and domestic purposes ? Yet this is jpro rata 
what they uncomplainingly receive and use every day. — 
I am, Sir. your obedient servant, 

"S." 

Undoubtedly there would be a hue and cry about the 
enormous cost of an undertaking such as has been carried 
through in Antwerp, but suppose it were possible at the 
same cost to equally liberally supply beer and wine, would 
not the money be forthcoming ? And yet those compounds 
are poisons, and water is the principal need of life. 

There is little doubt that the use of intoxicating drinks 
would be infinitely reduced if, instead of these dead fluids 
from aqueducts and reservoirs, everybody in the large 
centres of the world could have an abundance of always 
fresh pure water always at hand.* Any one who has 
drunk from a mountain spring realizes the difference. 
Grandly and permanently successful may the temperance 
agitation hope to become if it can secure sufficient public 
interest to obtain this priceless boon, this daily necessity 
to health from the cradle to the grave, and one more calcu- 
lated than is almost any other agent to widen the distance 
between them. 

Under the heading of Water for Infants, the New YorJc The New 
Medical Record (August 18, 1883) says :— Sctrfon'''^ 

" With the exception of tuberculosis, no disease is so water for 
fatal in infancy as intestinal catarrh, occurring especially ^^ ^^ ^' 
during the hot summer months, and caused, in the majority 
of cases, by improper diet. There are many upon whom 
the idea does not seem to have impressed itself that an 
infant can be thirsty without at the same time being 
hungry. When milk, the chief food of infants, is given 
in excess, acid fermentation results, causing vomiting, 
diarrhcea, with passage of green or yellowish-green stools, 
elevated temperature, and the subsequent train of symptoms 

* Drinkers no less than abstainers onght to interest themselves in 
this subject, becaus*^ their drinks, besides the alcohol and various 
adulterating compounds, consist, as they know, mostly of water — 
exactly the same kind of water which the abstainer takes, minus the 
other compounds. 



390 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dr. James 
Wilson on 
the thera- 
peutic pro- 
perties of 
water. 



The Lancet 
on water- 
drinking. 



wliicli are too familiar to need repetition. The same tiling 
would occur in tlie adult if drenched with milk. The 
infant needs not food, but drink. The recommendation of 
some writers, that barley-water or gum- water be given to 
the little patients in these cases, is sufficient explanation 
of their want of success in treating this affection. Pure 
water is perfectly innocuous to infants ; it is difficult to 
conceive how the seeming prejudice to it ever arose. Any 
one who has ever noticed the avidity with which a fretful 
sick infant drinks water, and marks the early abatement 
of febrile and other symptoms, will be convinced that 
water as a beverage, a quencher of thirst, a physiological 
necessity, in fact, should not be denied to the helpless 
member of society. We have often seen an infant who 
has been dosed ad nauseam for gastro-intestinal irritability 
assume, almost at once, a more cheerful appearance, and 
rapidly grow better when treated to the much-needed 
draught of water. If any prescription is valuable enough 
to be used as routine practice, it is, ' Give the hahies vjater.'' " 

Of both the health-preserving and medicinal qualities 
of pure water. Dr. James Wilson writes : — 

" There is no agent applied to the human body, ex- 
ternally or internally, that has such influence in awakening 
all the vital powers to their great restorative capabilities, 
in arresting the progress of disease or preventing a fatal 
termination, as pure water. Administered at various tem- 
peratures, it is the most powerful remedy we possess ; a 
stimulant, a sedative, a diuretic, a sudorific." 

In an article on Water-drinking, The Lancet (December 
15, 1883) says— 

" It is somewhat surprising that in a country in which 
rain falls almost every day in large or small measure, the 
use of pure water as a drink is not better understood than 
it is. Even now that the sway of temperance is well estab- 
lished, and continues to extend, we should be surprised to 
learn that a majority of Englishmen do not habitually dis- 
card the use of the natural beverage for one or other in 
which it is compounded with foreign ingredients. Yet its 
very purity from all but a salutary trace of mineral matter 
is what renders it capable of exactly satisfying, and neither 
more nor less than satisfying, the needs of thirsty tissue, 
and of assisting by its mere diluent and solvent action, 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 391 

without stiimilation or other affection of function, the 
digestion and excretion of food. No other qualifications 
are necessary. Given digestible, solid food, and fair — that 
is, normal — digestive power, water alone is all-sufficient as 
liquid. During the feebleness consequent on disease or 
overwork everything is changed. There is blood, though 
impoverished in quality, to receive and convey nutritive 
material, and there are tissues to be fed ; but the vis a tergo., 
the driving power of the heart, resides in a languid muscle, 
and the alimentary canal, itself but poorly irrigated from 
that centre of supply, receives what food is taken only to 
prove its incapacity to utilize it. Nature is flagging, and 
a stimulant alone will make ends meet in the circle of 
tissue-building processes. As a general rule, however, 
abstinence holds the first rank, both in theory and practice. 
We do not assert that the man who regularly, and in 
strict moderation, partakes of a light stimulant — claret, 
for instance — may not, especially if he is equally regular 
in regard to outdoor exercise, live comfortably to the full 
term of human life ; but what we say is that the more 
simply the man fares, the more he employs such adven- 
titious measures for actual physical necessity, the more he 
will gain in health, in life, in working power, and in 
aptitude to benefit by stimulation when strength is failing 
from disease or from decay. But if water be the drink, 
how shall it be drunk ? The meaus must have regard to 
the end required of them. To moisten food and prepare 
it for digestion, it is hardly necessary to say that it should 
be taken with a meal ; a couple of tumblerfuls at dinner 
is not an excessive quantity for most persons. For thirst- 
quenching properties nothing can surpass this simplest of 
drinks, and all which approach it in efficacy owe their 
power almost entirely to it. As to temperature, there is 
no real ground for supposing that one should not drink 
a sufficiency of cold water when the body is heated by 
exertion. The inhabitants of hot climates have no such 
objection. Some tropical wells are dug so deep that the 
water within them, even in hot seasons, is as cool as that 
of a European spring. In fevers, too, the use of ice in 
quantities sufficient to allay thirst is a part of rational and 
legitimate treatment. The shock which has to be avoided 
in all such states is not that which cools the mucous 



392 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

membrane, but that of sliarp cbill applied to the surface 
of the body. Some persons, however, find it convenient 
and beneficial to imbibe a certain amount of warm water 
daily, preferably at bedtime. They find that they thus 
obtain a bland diluent and laxative, without even the 
momentary reaction which follows the introduction of a 
colder fluid, and softened by abstraction of its calcareous 
matter in the previous process of boiling. This method, 
which is an accommodation to jaded stomachs, has its 
value for such, though it is not great even for them ; but 
it affords no noticeable advantage for those of greater tone. 
The use of water as an aid to excretion deserves some 
remark. In certain cases of renal disease it has been found 
to assist elimination of waste by flushing without in any 
way irritating the kidneys. Every one is probably aware 
of its similar action on the contents of the bowel when 
taken on the old-fashioned, but common-sense, plan of 
drinking a glass of water regularly morning and evening, 
without any solid food. Whatever may be true of harm- 
less luxuries, enough has been said to show that health, 
happiness, and work find stimulus enough in the un- 
sophisticated well of nature." 
Dr. riohn's Thosc who imagine water to be such a weak and vapid 

on'water^n'^ thing, would be interested in examining the bibliography 
Dr. Ziems- on water (by Dr. Plohn) published in Dr. Ziemssen's 
hooko/^^' Sandhooh of General Therapeutics (Leipsic, 1883), occupy- 
Generai i^g twcuty-cight large octavo close and small-printed pages, 
le^ajjeuics. gj^^^j^^^g ^]^g medical literature on water to be almost as 
voluminous as the religious literature on the Bible. 
Interesting Dr. Morel, in speaking of the fact that the practice 

D? M?S ^^ <^f milking cows all the year round, during long ranges of 
to the re- generations has made the secretion of milk a constant 
pow^eTof ^ instead of temporary function, cites the interesting cognate 
natural fact, that in Columbia, where circumstances, such as the 
when per- great Superabundance of cattle, etc., have interrupted this 
them^are^^ practice. Only a few years of freedom from its constraint 
desisted havo sufiiced to restore the organization to its primitive 

So if in our case the practice of drinking without 
reference to real thirst, and in obedience to craving pro- 
duced by injurious fluids, could be abrogated, and pure 
water be permitted to resume its original office in the 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 393 

system, whicli it would do in all likelihood in an astonisli- 
inglj short time, we are justified in believing that it 
would mark an epoch in the condition of mankind, not 
only of physical, but of moral, mental, and spiritual health 
far closer to the pure ideal of humanity than we have yet 
reached or prefigured. 

§ 93. A great step in the direction of reform in part The import- 
commenced, is that of educating the young to understand stru^cting^" 
and respect their bodies. As early as 1856, at the Conqres de ^^tiiidreii to 
JBienfaisance (Brussels), it was proposed, as a means against their own 
intemperance, that all obstacles to the spread of useful egpgciaiiyin 
knowledge to the very lowest grades of society should be regard to the 
removed ; and Frere-Orban, Belgian Minister of Finance, doertothem! 
in his report on intoxicating drinks, to the Chamber, 
(1868), proposed the establishment of " a public system of 
education which tends to inculcate in the children, by 
counsels, pictures, and waitings, horror of excess and fear 
,of the evils sure to result from intemperance or the least 
use of intoxicating drinks.'' 

The first active step in the direction of temperance 
education in England was taken by the I^ational Temper- 
ance League, and in a special memorable meeting at Exeter Testimony 
Hall (February 13th, 1878), the Lord Bishop of Exeter, in Bishop o? 
the chair, in a powerful and eloquent speech said, " Long Exeter. 
before this we ought to have made it one of the ordinary 
lessons in our elementary schools that one of the most 
awful evils that ever afilicted the country is to be found in 
the use of intoxicating liquors." 

Hev. Dr. Adamson, of the Edinburgh School Board, at Of the Rev. 
a public meeting at Galashiels (February, 1881), stated JJ'tte^S"' 
that " Ninety-four per cent, of the cases in which parents burgh School 
failed to provide education for their children were found 
to be addicted to intemperance." 

Although elementary temperance literature has become 
more familiar to the children since it w^as allowed among 
text-books, very much yet remains to be done before either 
the schools or the little ones can be in a fit state for 
purposes of educRtion. 

The popular education system is poor because it is so Why the 
meagrely supported by public funds. Leon Donnat, the edJmion 
Belgian Statistician, in speaking of the relative amount of 



894 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



system is 
poor. 



public money devoted to war and education, gives the 
following figures per capita, quoted in tlie Fall Mall 
Gazette for May 5, 1883 :— 



Leon Don- .. -^ar. Education 

nat's esti- s d s d 

TZ^^T !'»'"=« 20 6 1 f 

Mall Gazette England 18 6 3 ] 



oftherela- Holland 17 9 3 2 

^rH"""*' Saxony 11 9 3 4 

expended on™.,-^. Tin in 

education Wurtemberg... 11 9 1 9 

and war by Bavaria 11 9 2 6 

pol^?s™^^^° Prussia 10 11 2 5 



War. 
s. d. 

Eussia , 10 2 

Denmark ... 8 8 

Italy 1 6 

Belgium 6 9 

Austria 6 8 

Switzerland ... 4 10 4 



Education. 

• s. d. 

... li 

... 4 7 

... 8 

... 2 3 

... 1 6 



This comparison, of course, takes no account of the 
frightful waste entailed by the sacrifice of the labour of 
able-bodied men during the period of military service." 

As a consequence, there is neither the inducement nor 
effort on the part of the State to engage the best minds 
and characters in the education of the growing generation. 

Again, education is poor because it is almost wholly 
confined to the cultivation of the intellect : practical 
goodness, patience, conscientiousness, and self-control do 
not enter into the curriculum. 

How inadequate purely intellectual training is likely 
to be to fulfil the needs of well-rounded education, is 
strikingly indicated by the statistics as to the results of 
the Compulsory Education Act during the last ten years 
at Edinburgh. At the great Temperance Convention in 
Edinburgh, March 3, 1884, ex-Bailie David Lewis said 
that "During the last ten years the Compulsory Educa- 
tion Act had been in operation, and in this city had been 
•wrought with an efficiency second to no other place in the 
kingdom, while the educational system in Edinburgh was 
equal to that of any city of Europe. During the last ten 
years there had been expended on education in Edinburgh 
diminish the a sum of £1,035,000, while there were at present engaged 
misery pro- ^ staff of 730 teachers. Notwithstanding the enormous 
^uced^by the amount of moral and educational power here represented, 
they found from the police returns that the number of 
drunken cases had increased from 5317 in 1872 to 7236 
in 1882, being an increase of 26 per cent., while the 
increase of the population had only been 16 per cent. 
Again, they found Edinburgh presented an illustration of 



Ex-Bailie 
Lewis on the 
inadequacy 
of the Com- 
pulsory 
Education 
Act and of 
sanitary 
agencies to 
uproot or 
essentially 



public- 
house 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 395 

the extent to wliicli sanitary agencies were counteracted 
by the drink evil. In 1867 an Act was passed for im- 
proving the waste places of the city. Upwards of half 
a million was expended in rooting ont the haunts of 
wretchedness and vice ; while another half-million was 
expended on improved dwellings and other sanitary reforms. 
That the results of this grand sanitary experiment had 
been largely counteracted by the public-house was only 
too apparent. From 1867 up till 1879, when they had 
a change in the police law, the number of drunken cases 
increased 43 per cent,, while the population had only 
increased 16 per cent." 

Says Dr. Channing,* " To educate is something more Dr. cban- 
than to teach those elements of knowledge which are SJ"i?nof^' 
needed to get a subsistence. It is to exercise and call out education. 
the higher faculties and affections of a human being. 
Education is not the authoritative, compulsory, mechanical 
training of passive pupils, but the influence of gifted and 
quickening minds on the spirits of the young. 

" Of what use, let me ask, is the wealth of this community His views on 
hut to train wp a hetter generation than ourselves ? Of what of weaith.^^ 
use is freedom, I ask, except to call forth the best powers 
of all classes and every individual ? What but human 
improvement is the great end of society ? 

" The poorest child ought to have liberal means of self- 
improvement, and were there a true reverence among us 
for human nature and for Christianity, he would find 
them." 

Education is poor also because it almost wholly fails to 
teach the knowledge of the body and how to take care 
of it. 

But in this respect a little light is breaking. 

In sect. 10, chap. 38 of the Revised Statutes of Temperance 
Massachusetts for 1872, occurs the following : — " It shall Jhe^scho^is'of 
be the duty of the president, professors, and tutors of the Massachu- 
University at Cambridge and of the several colleges, of 
all preceptors and teachers of academies, and of all other 
instructors of youth, to exert their best endeavours to 
impress on the. minds of children and youth committed 
t^o their care and instruction the principles of piety and 
justice, and a sacred regard for truth ; love of their 
* Temperance address, Boston, 1837. 



396 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

conntry, humanity, and universal benevolence ; sobriety, 
industry, and frugality ; chastity, moderation, and temper- 
ance." 
The noble In England, owing to the faithful and skilful labours of 

the^NSionai ^^^ National Temperance League,* temperance has become 
Temperance a familiar theme in public schools. The Temperance Record 
the sprea^dof for September 13, 1883, notes that — 

eduEn'^ " ^^® Lords of the Committee of Council on Education 

have added hygiene to the list of sciences towards instruc- 
tion, in which aid is afforded by the Science and Art 
Department. 

" The syllabus of the subject that has been issued by 
the Education Department is as follows : — 

'■^ '' Elementary Stage. — (1) Food, diet, and cooking; 
(2) water and beverages ; (3) removal of waste and 
impurities; (4) air; (5) shelter and warming ; (6) local 
conditions; (7) personal hygiene ; (8) treatment of slight 
wounds and accidents. Advanced Stage. — (1) Eood and 
adulterations ; (2) water and beverages ; (3) examination 
of air — chemical and microscopical ; (4) removal of waste 
and impurities ; (5) shelter and warming ; (6) local con- 
ditions ; (7) personal hygiene ; (8) prevention of disease. 
The Honours Stage embraces, in addition to the above sub- 
divisions of the subject, (1) trades nuisances ; (2) vital 
statistics ; and (3) sanitary law.' " 
Cardinal And Cardinal Manning, according to the Daily News 

olde?fo?'the (November 28, 1883), "has issued an order that a branch 
establish- of the Catholic Total Abstinence League of the Cross shall 
branches ^^ formed in every Catholic school in the Archdiocese of 
of the Westminster ; and that the manager of each school shall 

Total Absti- be the president of each branch ; and temperance literature 
League in ^^ *° ^® supplied to the pupils at weekly meetings of the 
every branches." 

schooiTn the Considering the almost incalculable influence teachers 
Archdiocese have over children, and the fact that in the elementary 
minster." schools of England there are over four millions of children, 
what power must the teachers exert in determining the 
whole future of the nation ! and if they will use this power 
in impressing the growing minds under their care with 
a full and particular knowledge of the facts concerning 

* The apostles of the National Temperance League are doing a 
great work in both army and navy. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 397 

the evil of alcoliolic liquors, what a mighty work for 
temperance will be accomplished with the little ones them- 
selves and, through them, in innumerable homes threatened 
with or already fallen under this curse ! 

That similar grand school reforms are going forward Efforts to 
on the continent, is evident from the report, in the Temper- temperance 
ance Record (September 20, 1883), of "an address delivered education in 
by Dr. Scholtz, of Bremen, on the 17th of May last, before fch^ooiT- 
the Allgemeine Deutsche Lehrerversammlung, a national 
union of teachers, not exclusively, though of course largely, 
composed of elementary teachers, which met this year in 
that town. Dr. Scholtz propounded four theses, each of 
which he defended in turn. (1) That the teaching of 
hygiene should be obligatory in all schools. (2) Hygiene 
should be treated as a part of natural science. (3) The 
teaching of anatomy and physiology should be strictly 
limited to such points as have a direct bearing on the 
health of the individual. (4) Dr. Scholtz's last thesis 
was, that in the seminaries (i.e., training colleges) hygiene 
should be taught as an integral subject of study, for the ' 
good reason that he who attempts to teach the elements of 
a science should first be master of every part. The outline 
he sketched of the subjects to be taught is nearly identical 
with the syllabus recently issued by our department." 

Elementary temperance teaching is at present furnished ^"^ i? 
in many schools in Canada as well as in AustraHa, and the Australian, 
Temperance Record (January 31, 1884) contains an article on ^^^ . 
temperance work in United States' schools taken from the schools. 
National Temperance Advocate of New York, which says — 

" Already laws have been passed in Minnesota, Vermont, 
and Michigan, placing among the required studies in all 
schools supported by public money or under State control, 
physiology and hygiene, which shall give special promi- 
nence to the effect of alcoholic drinks upon the human 
system, and teachers must be examined in this as in other 
necessary studies. By circulating petitions and by other 
means similar laws for compulsory temperance education 
can be passed in every State, because people will vote for 
the education of their children far sooner than they will 
for prohibition." 

The Fall Mall Gazette (February 16, 1884) says— 

" An American Assembly-man, who holds that besides 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

ttie three R's instruction in physiology and hygiene should 
be given in the public schools of America, has drafted a 
bill for that purpose. In his opinion it is necessary that 
some knowledge of the human body, and of the conditions 
under which that body can live in a healthy state, should be 
imparted to a child. And not only should this be taught, 
but it should be taught with especial reference to the effect 
of narcotic and alcoholic poisons on the human system. 
His bill requires that teachers applying for positions in 
the public schools shall be examined with reference to 
their knowledge of physiology and hygiene." 

An institution in connection with the public schools in 
Sweden which is greatly promotive of temperance is the 
school savings-bank system, by which the pupils, boys 
and girls, are from their earliest years encouraged to 
deposit small sums, of only a few ore (ten ore a little more 
than one penny) at a time till a crown (a little over a 
shilling) has been laid up, when it is transferred to the 
real city savings-bank, so that when they come of age 
they have a little nest-egg to begin life with, and at the 
same time have acquired a rational practical habit of 
economy. 

The industry which goes naturally with economy and 
temperance is also practically taught in the workshop 
department of these schools in which the pupils receive 
regular instruction in all sorts of useful handicraft, and 
ornamental also. They receive twenty per cent, on the 
sale of the tools and implements they make, from knife 
handles and knife trays, to blackboard brushes and step- 
ladders. These schools have special tuition in the laws of 
health ; and as to the products of both animal and vegetable 
kingdoms, the girls are taught all the mechanical processes 
of milk and butter-making, the character and names of j all 
portions of fish and flesh as sold in the markets, and how 
to utilize them in the best methods of cooking, what to do 
with bones, fat, etc. ; the same with regard to vegetable, 
flax, hemp, etc. They are trained to describe the different 
materials and values of the clothing they have on, where 
in Sweden each particular animal product or fabric are to 
be found, etc., etc. A most admirable preparation against 
the waste, carelessness, and degradation which are so 
much the results of ignorance. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 399 

But the worst cause why popular education fails, and Poverty the 
the most difficult of remedy, is the miserable poverty* of ^f%X^^ 
the masses whose children form the vast majority of the education, 
attendance at public schools ; and that drink is the chief JJe chief 
cause of this poverty,! does not change the fact that the ^^^f^^^ 
children, hungry, ill-clothed, and full of premature care, 
are in no condition to study, or to profit by teaching. 

Mr. E. IST. Buxton, Chairman of the London School statement by 
Board, in his opening address to that body, October 4, Buxt^n^" 
1883, drew a dismal picture of the failure of the Education Chairman of 
Act of 1870. Among other sad examples he quotes — school 

" The School Management Committee lately had a Board, 
report in which an analysis was made of the mode of living 
of the parents whose children attend school in the metro- 
polis. In one, the scholars came from 313 families, and 
182 of these families live in a single room. In the second 
school, the scholars came from 487 families, 400 of whom 
lived in one room. In a third school, the children came 
from 339 families, 289 of whom lived in one room." 

In his address to his constituents at Sheffield (December statement by 
11, 1883), Drink in its Bearing upon Education^ the Right Hon. Mr. 
Honourable Mr. Mundella, M.P., said — Mundeiiaon 

drink m its 
* The education of the wealthy is often, though in the very oppo- bearing upon 
site direction, almost as ineffectual as that of the poor. With birth ^'i^^^tio^- 
and money, one or both, behind them, the young Farintoshes and 
Lord Yerisophts have it all their own way with their tutors and pro- 
fessors ; at home, at school, at the university they are deferred to, 
flattered, and coached into what is deemed a gentlemanly education. 
The system fosters indolence, dissipation, and the concrete vices of 
selfishness, totally unfitting them for doing their part in this or any 
great work of reform. Yet it is as essential to the well-being of 
society that the education of the wealthy should be practical, serious, 
and broad as it is that the children of the poor should be properly 
fed, clothed, and cared for before they are put to books. 

" If I were called upon to name those within my knowledge who 
have ruined their prospects in life, who have lost good situations and 
have fallen from comparative care and competence to a state of 
degradation, they would not be the men belonging to the labouring 
class, following agricultural or mechanical pursuits ; but they would 
be men of a superior class, of good education — men who have enjoyed 
comfortable homes and good salaries, and who, in spite of all, have 
fallen victims to this abominable and frightful vice of drink," — 
Quotation from an address by Mr. Walter, M.P., proprietor of the 
Times, cited in Eev. Dr. Dawson Burns' Christendom and the Drink 
Curse (London, 1875). 

t See Chap. x. pp. 234-265. 



400 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Poverty will 
never yield 
until drink 
Is removed. 



Mr. Glad- 
stone on 
poverty, in 
the House of 
Commons, 
in 1843. 



" ITow, here is a block containing 1082 families and 
2153 children of school age ; mind, that excludes children 
below five years of age, and above thirteen. There are 
three schools in the block, two churches, three chapels,' 
and forty-one public-honses. Now, what does that mean ? 
I want yon just to think this out for a moment. For 
these 1082 families — wretched, poverty-stricken, miserable 
in all their surroundings — there are forty-one public- 
houses ! That means that every twenty-five of these 
wretched families have one public-house ! If you will 
carry it out for yourselves— that is to say, if you consider 
what it costs to maintain an average public-house in 
London, and consider what these twenty-five families must 
spend in drink to maintain it — you will form some idea 
of one of the greatest causes of this misery among our 
population. When Mr. Eorster was passing his Education 
Bill, Mr. Bartley made an investigation, which showed 
that less than one penny per week per family in a square 
mile of the East of London was spent on education, 
and more than 4<s. 3d. in drink. That means, in the 
whole of this area of wretchedness of a mile square, the 
education cost less than four shillings a year for the 
family, and the drink more than £11." 

Yet with all that England has done to relieve it, 
especially during the last forty years, we see this poverty 
not only not overcome, but steadily growing. Why ? 

Because those who see and seek to alleviate poverty 
do not first attack the root of the evil, drink. In chapters 
vii. and x., on moral and social results, it was explained 
at length how omnipotent a cause drink is, of all evils and 
of poverty with all its concomitants of misery. 

Forty years ago an agitation for the removal of poverty, 
very similar to the present, shook the whole of England. 
On the 13th of February, 1843, Mr. Gladstone said to the 
House of Commons : — 

" It is one of the most melancholy features in the social 
state of this country that we see, beyond the possibility of 
denial, that while there is at this moment a decrease in the 
consuming powers of the people, an increase of the pres- 
sure of privations and distress, there is at the same time a 
constant accumulation of wealth in the upper classes, 
an increase of luxuriousness of their habits and of their 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 401 

means of enjoyment, wliicli, however satisfactory it may be 
as affording evidence of the existence and abundance of 
one among the elements of national prosperity, yet adds 
bitterness to the reflections which are forced upon us by 
the distresses of the rest of our fellow-countrymen." 

To-day most radical measures are proposed even by the Lord Saiis- 
members of former cabinets, as well as by members of the ^^^'^ sug- 

' -^ gestions tor 



present cabinet. Lord Salisbury, member of the Beacons- the aiievia- 

" " ~ " ^ tion of 

5 poverty- 



field cabinet, and present leader of the Conservative party, *^°" ^^ 



contributed to the National Bevieio (November, 1883), a made in the 
notable paper on Labourers' and Artisans' Dwellings, in Eeview!' 
which he advocates measures for the " housing of the November, 
poor," of a state-socialistic nature. The following is a fair 
digest of this article : — 

" The housing of the poor in our great towns, especially 
in London, is a much more difficult and much more urgent 
question, for the increase of prosperity tends rather to 
aggravate the existing evil than to lighten it. It is, in 
fact, directly caused by our prosperity. . . . 

" Thousands of families have only a single room to 
dwell in, where they sleep and eat, multiply and die. For 
this miserable lodging they pay a price ranging from two 
shillings to five shillings a week — a larger rent, on the 
whole, than the agricultural labourer pays for a cottage 
and garden in the country. It is difficult to exaggerate 
the misery which such conditions of life must cause, or the 
impulse which they must give to vice. . . . These over- 
crowded centres of population are also centres of disease ; 
the saccessive discoveries of biologists tell us more and 
more clearly that there is in this matter an indissoluble 
partnership among all human beings breathing in the 
same vicinity. If the causes of disease were inanimate, no 
one would hesitate about employing advances of public 
money to render them innocuous. Why should the ex- 
penditure become illegitimate because these causes happen 
to be human beings ? . . . The question remains whether 
more can be done by Parliament than has been done, and 
if so, in what direction ought it to move ? A more im- 
portant subject of inquiry could hardly be suggested; for 
it concerns, directly or indirectly, the well-being of hundreds 
of thousands. ... I see a statement in the newspapers 
that the Liberty and Property Defence League are prepar- 

2d 



402 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. Cham- 
berlain on 
the same 
topic in 
Fortnightly 
Review, 
December, 
1883. 



ing to denounce any sucli interference as unsound in prin- 
ciple. If ihis account of their views is a true one, I think 
they have in this instance gone farther than sound reason- 
ing and the precedents of our legislation will justify. . . .« 
This unhappy population has a special claim on any assist- 
ance that Parliament can give. The evil has in a great 
measure been created by Parliament itself. . . . Under 
these circumstances, it is no violation even of the most 
scrupulous principles to ask Parliament to give what relief 
it can. Laissez faire is an admirable doctrine, but it must 
be applied on both sides." 

This shows how keenly alive Lord Salisbury is to the 
horrible condition of the poor in the city : how about 
those in the country ? But he has not a word to say of 
drink, the chief cause of it ; and, curiously enough, states 
that " the evil has been in a great measure created by 
Parliament itself." 

Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, President of the Board of 
Trade, contributed to the December number of the Fort- 
nightly Revieiv (1883) an article on the Housing of the 
Poor, which is even more radical than Lord Salisbury's in 
its suggestions for the removal of poverty. It opens with 
this ominous paragraph — 

" Social reform is in the air. In the pages of this 
review a^ble writers have for some time past endeavoured 
to impress on statesmen and politicians the urgency of 
social questions and the magnitude of the evils which have 
silently undermined the extraordinary show of outward 
prosperity on which we have been congratulating ourselves 
during the last thirty years. Never before in our bistory 
were wealth and the evidences of wealth so abundant ; 
never before was luxurious living so general and so wanton 
in its display ; and never before was the misery of the very 
poor more intense, or the conditions of their daily hfe more 
hopeless and more degraded. In the course of the last 
twenty years it is estimated that the annual income of the 
nation has increased by six hundred millions, but there are 
still nearly a million persons constantly in receipt of parish 
relief, and millions more are always on the verge of this 
necessity. The vast wealth which modern progress has 
created has run into 'pockets;' individuals and classes 
have grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice, and are 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 403 

busying themselves in inventing methods of wasting the 
money which they are unable to enjoy. But the great 
majority of the ' toilers and spinners ' have derived no 
proportionate advantage from the prosperity which they 
have helped to create, while a population equal to that of 
the whole metropolis has remained constantly in a state of 
abject destitution and misery. Is it wonderful that from 
time to time are heard murmurs of discontent and even of 
impatient anger ? What manner of men and women must 
these millions of paupers be if they can see without re- 
pining or resentment the complacent exhibition of opulence 
and ease which is for ever flaunted in their faces, within a 
few hundred yards of the noisome courts and alleys in 
which they huddle for warmth and shelter, without a 
single comfort, and in hourly anxiety for the barest 
necessaries of life ? The cry of distress is as yet almost 
inarticulate, but it will not always remain so. The needs 
of the poor are gradually finding expression ; the measui^es 
proposed for their relief are coming under discussion. The 
wide circulation of such books as the ' Progress and 
Poverty,' of Mr. Henry George, and the acceptance which 
his proposals have found among the working classes, are 
facts full of significance and warning. If something be not 
done quickly to meet the growing necessities of the case, 
we may live to see theories as wild and methods as unjust 
as those suggested by the American economist adopted as 
the creed of no inconsiderable portion of the electorate." 

He also ignores drink as a chief agent in this misery, 
and suggests a principal remedy in these words : — 

" Let us go to the root of the matter, and state the 
principle on which alone a radical reform is possible. The 
expense of making towns habitable for tlie toilers ivho dwell in 
them inust be thrown on the land ivhicli their toil makes 
valuable, and without any effort on the part of its owners. 

" When these owners, not satisfied with the unearned 
increment which the general prosperity of the country has 
created, obtain exorbitant returns from their investment 
by permitting arrangements which make their property a 
public nuisance and a public danger, the State is entitled 
to step in and to deprive them of the rights which they 
have abused, paying only such compensation as will fairly 
represent the worth of their property fairly used." 



404 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Dangers 
from sup- 
planting 
moral im- 
petus by- 
mere 
political 
agitation. 



Earl Shaftes- 
bury on the 
mischief of 
State aid, 
Nineteenth 
Century, 
December, 
1883. 



Earl Shaftes- 
bury's state- 
ment that 
"It is im- 
possible, 
absolutely 
impossible, to 
do anything 



If legislation could remove poverty, Mr. Cliainberlain's 
remedy would doubtless go far towards doing so ; but if 
tbis matter be left to legislation only, or cbiefly, ^.e., if tbe 
question of poverty is made principally a political one, and 
therefore through political interests and reasons introduced 
into Parliament — instead of being brought there by force 
of the earnest, calm, intelligent expression of the popular 
■will, because it is known and felt that the solution of the 
poverty problem is of paramount importance to the welfare 
of the whole nation — it is too likely to meet with the same 
fate which has befallen other great moral measures when 
dealt with from a chiefly political point of view. 

Earl Shaftesbury, in his part, The Mischief of State Aid, 
in the symposium on poverty and its remedies (Nineteenth 
Century, December, 1883), admirably points this fact in 
these words : 

" If the State is to be summoned not only to provide 
houses for the labouring classes, but also to supply such 
dwellings at nominal rents, it will, while doing something 
on behalf of their physical condition, utterly destroy their 
moral energies. The State is bound in a case such as this 
to give every facility by law and enabling statutes,* but 
the work itself should be founded and proceed on voluntary 
effort, for which there is in the country an adequate 
amount of wealth, zeal, and intelligence. . . . Were a 
central committee formed in the city of London, consisting 
of gentlemen of power, wealth, and influence, who would 
undertake to organize such a movement, form local com- 
mittees (for local committees there inust be in the several 
districts), and issue an appeal, there would be in the present 
day, few can doubt it, a ready and ample response. These 
gentlemen would determine how far they could proceed 
without new legislation ; though additional laws, if required 
at all, would be required rather for the completion than for 
the commencement of the work. The powers already in 
existence should be called into operation. They are far 
greater than most people are aware of." 

These are invaluable suggestions, but, as Earl Shaftes- 
bury himself told me, " It is impossible, absolutely impos- 
sible, to do anything to permanently or considerably relieve 
this poverty, until we have got rid of the curse of drink." 
* Enabling Statutes, 14 and 15 Vict. chap. 34 of 1851. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 405 

And towards this end a report from sucli committees as toperma- 
Lord Shaftesbury suggests, would undou.btedly accomplish consiSbiy 

much. relieve 

The very removal of drink wonld make it physically SStirS'ehave 
impossible for the poor to sink so low as they now do, got rid of the 
because it is only by means of the deadening, narcotizing drink." 
effects that drink exercises on body and soul, that human 
beings can be brought to endure the lowest kinds of 
degradation. 

Without the benumbing influence of drink, many would 
awaken to their degraded condition, and this awakening 
would enable poor relief committees to do most beneficent 
and effective work. 

For example, a WorJcing Woman, in the column on The -^ working 
London Poor (Daily Neius, December 1, 1883), suggests the iettei%'sug- 
establishment of "A Labour Registry Office, conducted by fltaSSh^*^ 
Government or a company, where information might be mentofa 
obtained as to every kind of labourer, mechanic, or clerk Labour"^^^^ 
required. To be effectual, it should of course be necessary Registry 
to have these offices in all parts of the country, connected mws, ^^ ^ 
perhaps with the post-office or workmen's clubs ; they could R^g'Jx™^^''' 
be applied to by letter or personally. A certificate or 
recommendation from the last employer should be made a 
sine qua non ; thus enabling all good workmen to obtain 
employment, which is far from being the case now. It 
seems to me that the matter is worth a trial, especially as 
a successful instance is before us of a domestic servants' 
agency. At this establishment no servant is put on the 
list until a form has been sent to the former master or 
mistress, which they are desired to fill up as to the 
character of the servant applying for a place. This, if 
conscientiously filled up, is a great deterrent to character- 
less servants from applying." 

Another remedy, which Government, and such poor Suggestion 
relief committees as Earl Shaftesbury suggests, might estabSsh- 
co-operate in effecting, consists in the establishment of sober ™J^t ^^ 
working men's banks,* where those deemed by a proper ing men's 

relief banks. 

* A most valuabif suggestion as to tlie formation and conduct of 
working men's banks is given in Mr. L. 0. Smith's O^en Letter to tJie 
Labourers of Siveden (Stockholm, 1883). This letter is, as a whole, 
so rich in practical suggestions, that if translated and sown broad- 
cast over Great Britain, it would do much to produce in working 



406 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

board of judges fit recipients of pecuniary aid, should 
obtain it free of interest, and on tbe understanding tbat it 
was left to their honour to return such sums when able to 
do so. But no drinking person should be entitled to such 
aid, simply on the ground of his unreliability, and the 
probability that the money would go to the publican 
rather than to the improvement of his own condition. 
Special arrangements encouraging the deposit of savings, 
with a Tiew to the support of widows and children of sober 
working-men, might be made in these banks ; and a special 
department could be provided for the deposit of savings 
from drink, which could be promoted by many carefully 
considered regulations ; such, for instance, as the surety 
that when the total amount of deposit of this character — 
representing moral growth through resistance to tempta- 
tion — should have reached a certain figure, it should be 
augmented by a liberal gift, and a similar gift follow upon 
a future specified increase ; so that reformed drinkers 
would be strengthened in their reformation, not only by 
knowing that something was safe for a rainy day, for 
accident, for illness, or for some good enterprise for better- 
ing their condition, but that in case of their death their 
wives and children would be provided for. 

If the aristocracy and the wealth of London would 
establish and maintain an adequate institution of this 
kind, the expense to them individually would be trifling 
in proportion to their means, while the return in the 
diminution of poor taxes, and in the imperishable wealth 
of doing good, would be very great ; and, a still more vital 
point, they would lessen the gross total of wrong which 
saturates civilization, retarding human progress in the 
proportion of the existing amount of ill. 

There are links between the den and the palace, ties 
, between the millionnaire and the beggar, the virtuous and 
the wicked. Generally there exists a constant gradation 
between these conditions, at times there is a sudden trans- 
position from the one to the other ; the connecting pro- 
cesses are usually invisible, but they are none the less 
real, and work out the results with terrible certainty 
and accuracy. 

men's minds an intelligent notion of how to improve their whole 
economic, moral, social, and political position. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 407 

If England continue practically to ignore, or condone 
and minimize the drink evil as the root of poverty, infamy, 
and crime, she will reap the fruits of this error. Only 
with the solution of this problem will real goodness, with 
the happiness and peace they engender, come into those 
hearts and homes where wealth and luxury now only 
emphasize the unrest, the hollowness, and the hardness of 
their prosperous inmates. 

Contrasting the scenes in the London slums with the Mr. Francis 
splendour and lavish luxury of London's wealthy homes, responS- 
Mr, Francis Peek {Social Wreckage, London, 1883) says, ^^hUthe^ 
" How startling the contrast between the magnificence question of 
there and the sordid destitution here ; between these fair, J^iS^^ ^"^ 
richly clad, attractive women and those hideous human 
beings of the same sex, who sit shivering in rags and 
grimed with dirt ! Is it asked who is responsible for such 
a contrast ? Surely every indolent man or woman, who, 
living in ease and plenty, leaves things to take their 
chance under the excuse of business for want of power, 
but really with the unexpressed plea of Cain, ' Am I my 
brother's keeper ? ' 

"■ Retribution is the law of the universe. If we allow 
our brothers and sisters to drag out their existence in 
degradation, pauperism, and crime, a time will come, even 
in this world, when selfishness, pride, and indolence will 
bring their bitter reward. If the Christian teaching of 
brotherhood be ignored, the words ' liberty, fraternity, 
equality ' may once more become a battle-cry of revenge 
from those to whom the acknowledgment of their fraternity 
has been denied. Every Englishman, every Englishwoman, 
can do something, and they who decline to work in the 
cause of the poor, fail not less in their duty to their 
country and to their God." 

I am impelled to repeat that if this problem of poverty 
is left to legislation only, it will in the first instance be 
most probably long delayed, while the royal commission 
gathers evidence, and much time will be wasted in con- 
troversy and fencing over the report, with danger of its 
being ultimately shelved or rendered inoperative ; other 
measures more suitable for legislation, and for that reason 
more practicable, will be deferred, and when the longed- 
for legislation does come, it will hardly, as the saying 



408 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

goes, be worth, the candle. Parliamentary effectiveness is 
well summed up in the ancient threadbare hexameter : 

" Parturiunt montes nascitur ridicnlus mus." 

Generally speaking, legislation is satisfactory only in 
the degree that a minimnm of private and corporate 
interest is at stake, and as very large individual interests 
are in manifold ways concerned in any legislation for poor- 
maintenance by the State, it seems sanguine to expect very 
much directly from the present movement. 

I wish, however, not to be understood as saying or 
meaning that the State has no responsibilities or power to 
do much towards the alleviation of such suffering as the 
press of England is now discussing ; nor would I, if I 
knew it, say anything to check the beneficent warmth 
that has burst out toward the poverty-stricken. But it 
is surely well to remember that even the most excellent 
legislation, if not preceded by the necessary preparation 
for its application and reception, must largely become a 
failure. Legislation for poverty must more than any other 
be preceded by moral education and reform ; otherwise 
even the best legislation would only remove poverty, as 
we remove fruit from a tree, leaving behind all that will 
produce another harvest of the same. 

This fact was terribly and thoroughly illustrated in 
the great French Revolution. The watchword of the 
Assembly was, " Let no one bring up in opposition the 
rights of property. The right of property cannot be the 
right to starve fellow-citizens. The fruits of the earth, 
like the air, belong to all men." 

Wages were determined by law, and bounties were 
created for the poor. 
Bianqui on In speaking of this time the eminent French economist, 

oflegSiitive Blai^qi^i' i^ ^is History of Folitical Economy (Paris, 1860), 



^;;y Jf/ " All of wealth and felicity which philanthropic legis- 

poverty, lation could decree was decreed, but the people found that 
public wealth followed other laws than those of compul- 
sion. Governments and individuals were forced to seek the 
elements of future greatness elsewhere than in mere legis- 
lative programmes ; " they found " that the finest laws 
are insufficient to secure to each citizen a prosperous 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 409 

condition, unless lie co-operates witH them in labour and 
morality." 

Laws, then, are secondary considerations, proper con- individual 
ditions and proper men being the first requisites. It may oi°y sS){e^ 
truly be said that ideal laws and institutions prematurely foundation 
secured, i.e., secured to people unfit to appreciate, enforce, o^P^'^sress. 
and maintain them, result not only in swift and certain 
disasters, and in complications which have a long evil 
evolution, but force realization of the ideal thus sought for 
to recede into a more distant future than the processes of 
wise approach would have made necessary. 

A scheme for the relief of poverty, which has within a 
few years taken great hold of the public mind, is that of 
land nationalization, i.e., the transfer of land from indi- 
vidual to state ownership. (See p. 403.) It is of most 
ancient origin, having been practically applied by several 
of the great nations of antiquity. In modern times, during 
the French Revolution, it was tried with signal failure, 
when the Constituent Assembly of 1789 decided to put the 
whole burden of taxation on the land, except the property 
tax and custom duties. 

However monstrous and absurd the present scheme of Mr. Henry 
land nationalization may at first thought appear, it cannot ^if/^e\f 
be denied that its idea is noble ; and further, it must be land nation- 
admitted that in theory this scheme, as advanced by Mr. cure foT '^^ ^ 
Henry George — in essence the same as the schemes of poverty. 
Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer — is unassailable ; and 
were the elements and conditions of society ideal in them- 
selves and ideally adjusted, it would be practicable and a 
blessing. But the practical solution of the problem — in 
this case as in so many others — is quite different from the 
theoretical one. 

If we investigate the scheme of land nationalization to is'eithertime, 
see what are the possibilities for its becoming a blessing, ^0° peo^pie 
we are faced at the outset with conditions most unfit prepared 
and people most unripe for so profound an experi- 
ment. 

No one who understands human character expects that 
the landed proprietors would yield up their lands merely 
because of a popular demand. Holders of the land, they 
hold the power, and, holding the power, can defy public 
opinion. A revolution, therefore, would be required, a 



410 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. ' 

terrible and bloody revolution for dispossessing tbe land- 
lord. 

History has sbown tbat it is not tbe truest, most un- 
selfish, and wise men who lead revolutions, but rather those 
who can vie with and surpass the masses in inflamed 
counsel, in passion, in unreflecting hardihood, brutality, 
and crimes. 

And, after a successful revolution, what then ? 

In the stead of experienced and reflecting, if ofttimes 
hard and selfish, governments, we should find an ignorant, 
selfish, bigoted populace, frenzied and seething under the 
new tyrants, self-substituted for the former masters ? And 
if the revolutionists had been unanimous in their vengeance 
upon the holders of land, where would this unanimity be 
when it came to the division of the spoils ? 

Violence, arrogance, greed, these are the motives which 
actuate and appeal to the masses in excited times, and 
these would naturally be the characteristics of those who, 
having led the revolution, would next assume leadership 
in shaping the new order of things. And these certainly 
are not the men most qualified to reconstitute humanity 
upon a basis of liberty, equality, and fraternity, or fitted 
to recast the whole mould of social life in a harmonious 
correspondence with these principles. 

The wolf is not the fitting guardian of the sheepfold, 
nor is the coarse, brutal, successful revolutionist the right 
agent to manage the affairs of the helpless. 

Again, such a reconstruction as is implied by land 
nationalization would require years and years of peace and 
tranquillity for its realization. It would require not only 
the wisest, firmest, and largest harmonious council of men, 
but also the most unselfish, the most consistently self- 
abnegating. 

Where are these men to be found? Where is that 
great body of officials who in the development and manage- 
ment of this subversive experiment would need, and 
indeed could have, no check upon their activity, but that 
of their conscientiousness ? 

There is not enough individual unselfishness — cultivated 
and practical unselfishness — in the whole range of humanity 
covered under the word civilization to stock one county 
or state with enough religion, pure and undefiled, enough 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 411 

of neigliboiirliness sucli as the Master taught, to make the 
land nationalization experiment other than dangerously 
revolutionary, and one whose worst effects would be 
suffered by its noblest upholders. 

Where is the nation, the people, ready to accept all the 
risks, adversities, and innumerable calamities certain to 
accompany so stupendous a reconstruction of state and 
society, and go on waiting for an indefinite period, patiently 
for the outcome ? 

Until man lias heen regenerated, thorough-going schemes 
which involve a general levelling of social and economic 
inequalities and distinctions must be premature, and there- 
fore the land nationalization as now proposed is out of the 
question ; selfishness cannot be permanently trusted to 
guard against selfish and administer unselfish decrees. The founda- 
And the foundation of any individual or national regene- iidMduaf 
ration must be laid in temperance. orjiationai 

This truth was inculcated and emphasized in the first must be laid 
plea made by the founder of tbe modern English Temper- ^nce™^^^' 
ance movement, Mr. Joseph Livesay {The Moral Reformer, 
July 1, 1831), in these words : " While drinking continues, 
poverty and vice will prevail, and until this is abandoned no 
regulations, no efforts, no authority under heaven, can raise 
the condition of the ivorking classes. ^^ 

Figures speak loudly and clearly on this point. In 
round numbers the total rents in the United Kingdom 
annually for farms is £60,000,000, and for houses, 
£70,000,000, and the cost of the. drink trafl&c, as we saw 
in chap, x., far exceeds both these sums put together. 

And when we remember that the increase or decrease Suggestions 
of this enormous drink bill has depended chiefly upon might be 
opportunity, that it has increased with the increase of expected, 
prosperity and decreased with the decrease of prosperity, it land nation- 
seems very clear which reform, drink or land nationaliza- should be 
tion, is of paramount importance to the nation. For accomplished 
were land nationalization realized without temperance, J^mp^erance 
the enormously widened opportunity for drink would reform, 
soon show, in overflowing lists of poverty, insanity, and 
crime, how idle must all schemes of reform be which are 
not based, in the first instance, on the self-control of the 
individual, the very power which drink most fatally 
destroys. 



4:1 Z THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Commenting on tlie appalling Blach List of drink 
criminality occurring in England during the last week of 
1883 and tke first week of 1884, and summarized in the 
Alliance Neivs, the Gi^imshy News says — 

" Mr, Henry George is going up and down lecturing 
about 'Progress and Poverty,' and telling us that all the 
evils from which we suffer may be directly or indirectly 
traced to our land laws. Surely, even Mr. George must see 
that no reform in land laws can do much for a nation that 
permits itself to he demoralized in this way hy the traffic in 
strong drink. We spend twice as much on drink as on 
rent, and the results are before us in this blackest of black 
lists. Talk of our people now being able to enjoy them- 
selves ' rationally ; ' how can this be affirmed so long as in 
two short weeks we produce results like these in our towns 
and cities ? Some one has said that so long as we drink 
bitter ale, our cities must send up their ' Bitter Cry,' and 
we believe this is the sober truth. The other day Mr, 
Chamberlain told the shipowners of this country that the 
present loss of life among our seamen could not be any 
longer allowed to go on, and that Parliament must take 
decided action. It is high time that some one said the 
same thing about the loss of life and character and pro- 
sperity through the drink traffic. The fact is, we are as a 
nation thoroughly demoralized by this bloated interest," 

It is not easy to picture what the condition of this 
nation would be were the scheme of land nationalization 
to be accomplished without having been preceded by 
thorough temperance reform and that establishment of 
individual self-control, of sanity of mind and conscience 
inseparable from true temperance reform. The results 
likely to spring from those ample opportunities for un- 
limited supplies of drink, which the prosperity promised 
to the individual by the land nationalization scheme 
would afford, may be partly understood from a considera- 
tion of the scenes described in our papers and journals as 
occurring at Brighton beach, early in 1884. I quote the 
following from the ^t;em?z^ Standard (February 7, 1884) : — 
The Evening " The disgusting sccnes which took place near Brighton, 
descdTion Consequent upon some casks of beer and spirits from the 
of the scenes ill-fated Simla being washed ashore, are enough to excite 
casksthrown wonder as to how much a man is, even in the nineteenth 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 413 

century, tlie superior of tlie beasts. It is a Inimlliating ashore from 
fact that there is a considerable portion of the population on^^r\gh?on 
who, if given free access to intoxicants, will drink until beach, 
they fall insensible. The crowd on the beach near Brighton 
fell upon the casks like wild beasts, numbers became in- 
toxicated, many would have been disowned had not the 
coastguard dragged them beyond the reach of the advancing 
tide, several had the narrowest of escapes of death from 
the quantity of spirits they had swallowed, and one man 
actually died. It would seem, then, that it is from no 
consideration of decency, morality, or self-respect that 
a vast number of men are restrained from drinking to 
a point of intoxication, but that it is simply a question of 
expense. Given free liquor, and a mad debauch is in- 
dulged in. Such a fact as this seems to show that all our 
boasted advances, all the moral benefits of an extending 
education, all the conventional restraints of society are 
but surface deep, and that, given temptation — that is, 
liquor without having to pay for it — a disgusting carouse, 
which would disgrace the dwellers on a savage island, is 
the result." 

Unfortunately, this record by no means stands alone, similar 
The Weymouth and Portland Guardian^ in relating the lowing the 
scenes which followed upon the rescue of the cargo of the rescue of the 
Royal Adelaide, wrecked in the winter of 1872, says : wrecked 
" Amongst the cargo of the Royal Adelaide were a large ^J^f"-^ 
number of casks and bottles of spirits, and these, with the 
rest of the cai^go, have been constantly coming ashore. At 
the time of the rescue of the passengers and crew there 
were a number of fishermen and others who exerted them- 
selves nobly, worked most indefatigably, and deserved the 
highest praise. When, therefore, the wreckage began 
coming ashore, some spirit casks were broken open for the 
refreshment of the men. The coastguardsmen and others, 
too, remained in charge of the salved goods during the 
whole of Monday night. . . . What was our astonishment, 
on visiting the beach next morning, to find that not only 
did the wreck of the vessel present a very melancholy 
aspect, but that there was a much more appalling and 
heart-sickening sight on the beach, viz., men lying about 
in all directions in a state of the most beastly intoxication. 
. . . Men were found lying insensible beside a cask of 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH, 



spirits, or witli flasks, bottles, and other vessels beneath 
them. In the vicinity of two or three casks there were 
two men lying head to head in this condition. The first 
fatal case was that of a lad employed as errand boy by 
a Weymouth grocer. Then we heard of a man named 
Smith, who was not expected to live another hour. On 
proceeding to the Eerry Bridge, we saw two men, one of 
whom was just brought from the beach insensible and died 
immediately, and the other of whom had been lying in 
a state of insensibility for upwards of three hours." And 
the Temperance Becord (December 7, 1872), in an article on 
Drinking Disasters and ShipivrscJcs, says : " On the Irish 
coast, after the recent wreck of the Kinsdale, upwards of 
eighty men were lying in a state of stupor from the horrible 
effects of the drink extracted from a hundred and fifty 
barrels of ale that had been washed ashore." 

How true are Richard Cobden's words, that " the 
temperance cause lies at the foundation of all social and 
political reform " ! 

As Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., said, when addressing 
a Blue Ribbon meeting at Newcastle- on- Tyne (January 19), 
" Neither franchises nor education nor social transforma- 
tions will, of themselves, keep people sober ; and sobriety 
Tnust precede all moral, mental, and political reformation, 
if that reformation is to be real." * 



§ 94. There is a great lack of innocent and cheap 
amusement for the masses, and a fatal plenty of cheap 
amusements which are not innocent. 

" Innocent pleasure," says Dr. Channing (op. cit.), "has 
not been sufiiciently insisted on. ... A people should be 
guarded against temptation to unlawful pleasures by furnish- 
ing the means of innocent ones, such as produce a cheerful 
frame of mind, such as refresh instead of exhausting the 
system, such as recur frequently rather than continue long, 
such as send us back to our daily duties invigorated in body 
and mind. . . . Such as we can enjoy in the presence and 
society of respectable friends ; such as are chastened with 
self-respect, and accompanied with the consciousness that 
life has a higher end than to be amused. ... In every 
community there must be pleasures and relaxations and 
* Eeport in Good Templar's Watchword, February 4, 1884. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 415 

means of agreeable excitement, and if innocent ones are 
not fnrnislied, resort will be bad to criminal. Man was 
made to enjoy as well as to labour, and tbe state of society 
sbould be adapted to this principle of human nature." 

He speaks earnestly of the humanizing power of music,* The power 
its influence in homes and in public assemblies, to protect of tbe^ugr 
from the vice of drink and its kindred dissipations. Of ^^J^^pJiQ^ 
the stage, he says, " The drama answers a high purpose 
when it places us in the presence of the most solemn and 
striking events of human history, and lays bare to us the 
human heart in its most powerful, appalling, and glorious 
workings." 

A play of this kind, which occupied with an almost '^'\^™i"'^^^ 
unexampled success the boards of the Princess's Theatre, influencV"° 
London, for a year (1883), is the Silver King, a modern p^ncess's 
melodrama m.uch in advance of recent popular works of Theatre 
this class. In this play, Mr. Wilson Barrett, probably the Tan^aglment 
best living representative of the higher moral purposes ofMr.Wiison 
and poetic possibilities of dramatic art, powerfully portrays 
the story of a man who drinks away his chances and pro- 
spects, the peace of his young wife, and the livelihood of 
his children, while he is yet young. 

But he is brought to bay by the occurrence of a murder 
of which he is innocent, but which he supposes himself to 
have committed while in a drunken frenzy. 

His dreadful situation and the shame and anguish he 
has brought upon his faithful wife and little ones com- 
pletely sober him. Another clever turn in the plot, by 
which he is supposed to have perished in a burning car 
while fleeing from justice, gives him the opportunity to 

* At the invitation of Mrs. Ellicott, a meeting of tlie Popular 
Ballad Concert Committee was held on Saturday, in the drawing-room 
of No. 35, Great Cumberland Place, Hyde Park. The Bishop of 
Gloucester and Bristol presided. Mrs. Ernest Hart, the honorary 
secretary, gave an account of the movement, and spoke of the success- 
ful formation of choral classes, in which the students were all young 
men and women working in shops and factories. Lord Brabazon, 
Sir Julius Benedict, Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., Mr. Edmund Gurney, 
Mr. Horsfall, Dr. Norman Kerr, and others spoke in support of 
resolutions commending the objects of the society to general support. 
— Temperance Record (April, 1883). And the Saturday concerts in 
Exeter Hall, under the management of the National Temperance 
League, during this and last winter, have done m.uch to wean the 
working people of London from the public -house. 



416 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

repent and reform, of wMdi lie avails Mmself. In the 
scenes whicb. portray the moral descent, the abrnpt shock, 
and the moral recovery, there is a forceful illusbration of 
the impossibility of worthy character not based on self- 
control and just regard to the rights of others ; and there 
is preached a painfully impressive yet hopeful sermon on 
the curse of drink. The men who write, the artists who 
present such a play, do a distinct and signal service to 
humanity. 

Another play called Brinh (an adaptation by the late 
Mr. Charles Reade, of V Assommoir) , as presented at the 
Adelphi, London, with Charles Warner in the leading role, 
pictured the career of this vice in making total wreck 
of the mental, moral, and physical qualities of the hero in 
a manner almost too terrible to contemplate. 

The lesson and the warning conveyed in this play 
would, perhaps, be less deterrent to those in sorest need 
of such admonition, the very hopelessness of the total 
impression being calculated rather to palsy than to spur 
the flagging will and limp moral impulse characteristic 
of the victims of this vice. But to those not yet come 
under its thrall, the spectacle is one to withhold them even 
from the verge of danger. That many witnesses of both 
these plays, sought merely for sensation, and carried 
nothing away with them beyond the satisfaction of the 
moment, or went from them to public-houses to drink in 
mockery or bravado, or to dull uncomfortable flutterings 
of conscience and reason, does not alter the fact that good 
lessons were taught, and most effectively illustrated, to a 
large majority capable of appreciating and remembering 
them. 

But this question of healthy amusement, and elevating 
recreation does not stop with music and the drama. 
Human ingenuity has by no means exhausted itself ; hardly 
can it be said to have as yet really taxed itself in the 
provision of amusements which inspire and recreate as 
well as please. In this direction most effective and blessed 
work against the evil of drink can and ought to be 
done.* 

* Addressing Parliament in April, 1866, Mr. J. A. Eoebnck, M.P., 
said, " You close the picture-galleries and museums on holidays and 
feast days, but you leave wide open the gin-shop and the beer-shop ; 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 417 

In his address to the schools at Liverpool (January 26, The late 
]884), the late Duke of Albany said, " I shall be glad to Jj^anfon 
say a few words here about the pleasures of the poor and the duty of 
the part that the rich may fitly take in providing them. provJahig^ 
For I believe that there are some persons — not careless pleasure for 
or nukind persons only, but what may be called profes- ^^^°^- 
sional philanthropists — who hold that any attempt to 
provide the poor with music, flowers, and amusements, and 
the like, is merely foolish and sentimental, and that our 
duty to them lies only in the more serious region of educa- 
tion, religion, and so on. This is a point of view which 
I can never quite understand. I cannot understand Jiow a 
man can feel himself so separate frotn his felloiv-creatures as 
to think that the pleasures which are quite worth his attention 
in his own case can become mere superfluous trivialities in the 
case of the poor tnen and women and children who have so 
few pleasures in all their lives' 



" One of the most valuable of the reports on Intemper- The 



yei 



auce," says the Neivcastle Chronicle (November 23, 1880), chronicle 
" is that of nearly forty years ago of a House of Commons ^? ^^J^^^ JJ°- 
Committee, and it suggested the multiplication of free amusements 
libraries, of free parks, of public museums, and of allied on drink'and 
institutions : and though these may be costly to the nation, crime, 
they are less costly and less burdensome to the ratepayer 
than that appalling amount of drunkenness which feeds 
crime and staggers the imagination to realize its horrible 
extent and effect. The beat of the wings of this destroy- 
ing angel are now on the air, and, as in Egypt of old, we 
may have the result that there is not a house where there 
is not one as dead through this vice." 



§ 95. Irrespective of state and society generally, there The p-eat 
are several public bodies Avhose influence greatly affects this bmty^^^" 
evil of drink. One such body consists of the local magis- res-ting upon 
trates who issue the annual liquor licenses. This body is physicians,' 
vested with great authority, and could accomplish much c"er<ry^^in 
if imbued with an earnest patriotism and desire to do their regaVd'to 
part in diminishing the drink curse, and that the public eviif^"^'^ 
would support them in efforts at reducing the number of 
licensed public-houses seems probable from the steadily 

hating convivial meetings, yon make the people unsocial drunkards. 
The gin-shop you love, because it Id creases your revenue." 

2e 



418 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

increasing number of petitions from various counties to 
Parliament for local option or other means restricting the 
liquor trade, and from boroughs to magistrates for reduc- 
tion of licenses. 

Last year offered a conspicuous example of public 
sympathy with such measures. The magistrates of Rother- 
ham, who refused to renew a number of off-licenses in that 
borough, were by an overwhelming majority supported in 
their decision in a meeting called to censure their action. 

Then there are two great professional bodies upon 
whom we might almost say it ultimately depends whether 
this drink evil shall be utterly conqaered, i.e., tbe physicians 
and the clergy. The physician's prescription extends 
over the life of man from conception to the grave. If the 
physicians, as a body, persist in using alcoholic medicines, 
and as long as they do so, we may be able to check or 
considerably diminish it, but uproot it — never ! 

But the physicians, as we have seen, are rapidly be- 
coming unanimous, both in opinion and practice, that 
alcohol under nearly all circumstances is hurtful to 
organic life, and it is a happy omen that a great many of 
the young students of medicine are total abstainers. 
The re- Just as the State is largely interested in the success of 

of "the Church ^^^ liquor traffic because of the revenues it brings in, so also 
u regard to is the Church, materially speaking, even more concerned 
than the State in this traffic, because of contributions, 
tithes, educational and religious endowments, by dealers, 
and because of large ownership in public-house property. 

In the days when this relation of things was first estab- 
lished, drink, as we know, was regarded as a legitimate 
and rational exhilaration of the senses ; it was even called 
that "good creature of God," and coupled with His Word 
in the phrase " Beer and the Bible." 

This notion, though not dissipated everywhere even 
yet,* has been vigorously pushed from its vantage in the 
centre of general acceptance by the broad shoulders of 
Progress, the knowledge now universal, whether welcome 

* The Alliance News (November 24, 1883) reports Mr. H. E. 
Edwards as saying, in an address to a conference of licensed 
victuallers in Birmingham, November 7, " It used to be ' Beer and the 
Bible.' Now the Church says, ' Kick the beer-barrel away.' The 
beer-barrel, however, will stand as long as the Church." 



the drink 
evil. 



WHAT CAX BE DONE ? 419 

or not-,, that alcohol is always poison to body and mind, 
and even especially to the latter. 

Thus no alternative is left open to the Church bnt that 
of severing itself from all association with it, and it must 
be admitted that it has set bravely to work to do this. 

When the modern temperance movement first began to The origin 
obtain hold of the public heart of England, the Church o?Sifchureh 
opposed it strenuously, and the bitterness against it may of England 
be said to have reached its height when the Evangelical mOT^men? 
Alliance of Edinburgh proposed, in 1847, as subjects for 
discussion — " How far the study of physical facts led to 
infidelity, and the connection betwixt teetotalism and in- 
fidelity." In 1862, some two hundred clergymen, headed 
by Canon Henry J. Ellison, initiated a church temperance 
movement, which, chiefly owing to the devotion, enthu- 
siasm, tact, and capacity of Canon Ellison, has strengthened 
and spread until now it virtually embraces the largest 
portion of the Church of England. Of this movement, 
kuown as the Church of England Temperance Society, 
the Queen is patron, the Archbishop of Canterbury is 
president ; all the bishops are enrolled under its banners, 
and Canon Ellison is still its chairman. 

When called before the Lord's Committee in 1880, 
Canon Ellison said — 

"I call your lordships' attention to the prayer of Ti^e earnest 
14,000 clergy, from whom I believe the call for this com- name of the 
mittee originated. In their memorial to the bishops they En^^^nd^ 
ask this : ' We, the undersigned, clergy of the Church of Temperance 
England, venture respectfully to appeal to your lordships, the Sd^^ 
as the only members of our order in Parliament, as such, Committee 
most earnestly to support measures of the further restric- canon Henry 
tion of the trade in intoxicating liquors in this country. J- Ellison 

^ . „ ° ^ . . . «< chairman.of 

We are convinced, most or us, irom an intimate acquaint- the society, 
ance with the people, extending over many years, that [egisSonln 
their condition can never be greatly improved, whether favour of 
intellectually, physically, or religiously, so long as in- ^°^p^''*°^®- 
temperance extensively prevails among them ; and that 
intemperance will prevail so long as temptations to it 
abound on every side.' I cannot help saying that seeing 
that the excessive drinking of this country now is of such 
a wholesale character, and has its roots so very deeply in 
the habits of the population, you must attack it upon 



420 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Archbishop 
Benson's 
position re- 
garding 
temperance 
reform. 



every side. We believe it is like a great fortress — it must 
be attacked by investment, by mine, by sap, and by direct 
attack; but whatever other agencies may be used, the 
strong conviction of all those who, like myself, have been, 
engaged in parochial temperance work for many years, is, 
that we can do very little without the assistance of the 
legislature ; that so long (as this memorial says) as the 
temptations exist to the extent that they do exist now, we 
shall scarcely be able to make any imjoression upon the 
intemperance of the country." 

When the present president was the Archbisb op- 
Designate, he wrote from Truro (January 13, 1883), that 
he would " gladly and anxiously use any opportunities 
which the new position to which God has called him in 
the Church may give him to promote by legislation and 
other means the cause of temperance in this country." 
And now, in the beginning of the second year of his 
great responsibilities as the Primate of all England, he has 
preached a temperance gospel which will make the record 
of his archiepiscopate grow ever brighter in the widening 
light of man's advancement, as the years of reform and 
progress come gathering in with their blessings of en- 
lightenment to the generations we work and hope for, but 
shall not see in the flesh. On the occasion of the annual 
meeting of the Church of England Temperance Society, 
held at Lambeth Palace, April 29, 1884, he said — 

" All England is caring about the housing of the poor 
of London and the great towns, and must do its utmost 
to put the poor into decent dwellings. But then, ladies 
and gentlemen, what good will this have done if you have 
not taught the people to abstain from drink ? To go in 
for housing the poor properly is a pressing duty, but with 
all the cleanliness and regulation that you introduce you 
know it will be in vain unless yoii can teach the people to 
keep themselves temperate. Do not let us be content with 
sweeping and garnishing the house. We have it upon our 
Lord's word what that comes to w^hen it is done by itself. 
We must get a good spirit into the house if we wish the 
seven spirits not to come back — spirits of evil in sevenfold 
force, remember, and much more wacked than the first. 
It would be but sweeping and garnishing if we clean and 
clear and rebuild those houses, and do not teach the people 



WHAT CAIS" BE DONE ? 421 

to be sober. . . . Tn no past time bad tbe preacbers of tbe 
gospel to contend witb the demon of drink as tbey bave 
in tbis age of ours. To accept tbe gospel, to live con- 
scientionsly nnder tbe precepts of tbe gospel, to be fol- 
lowers of Cbrist, to be built on the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, and to drink ! The two things 
cannot co- exist. We must drive out the spirit of drink 
bj the Spirit of the gospel. Veiled or unveiled, drink 
must be driven out, or else we have wbat we may call 
^vbole countries and whole regions inaccessible to the word 
of truth."* 

On the 19th of N'ovember, 1883, the Church of England 
Temperance Society celebrated its twenty-first anniversary, 
and the sermon delivered by Canon Farrar in Westminster 
Abbey, if indicating the real spirit of the Church on the 
subject of temperance, shows that this society has nobly 
understood its mission. 

In calling for funds for tbe labours of the coming year, 
the society thus explains its purpose : — 

" To send into every diocese a resident and efficient Thepur- 

. . . '' poses and 

organizing agent. mission of 

" To carry on the rescue work of the society by earnest, JJ^nsi^nd 
devoted police-court missionaries. Temperance 

" To establish army, naval, workshop, servants', and ^^'^^^^y- 
cabmen's branches. 

"To prosecute the work of the branch in connection 
with the missions to seamen society. 

" To supply tracts, leaflets, and publications for general 
circulation. 

" To send gratuitously to clubs, schools, institutions, 
and colleges, copies of the weekly Ghronicle. 

" To assist in providing coffee and cocoa stalls and 
barrows, ninety of which bave been sent out. 

" To aid in the introduction of temperance teaching 
into colleges and schools. 

" To promote wise and remedial legislation as embodied 
in tbe society's proposed bill. 

" To form diocesan, parochial, and juvenile branch 
societies. 

" To send outfit and competent deputations (clerical 

* Temperance Record, May 1, 1884, 



422 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The Bishop 
of Carlisle on 
the success of 
the labours 
of this 
society (St. 
James's 
Hall, No- 
vember 20, 
1883), 



Canon Basil 
Wilberforce 
in denuncia- 
tion of 



and lay), and generally to extend the objects of tlie society 
by moral, social, and educational means." 

At the society's breakfast tbe next morning (November 
20, 1883), in St. James's Hall, the Bishop of Carlisle, in 
alluding to the activity of the Church in the directions of 
relief and education, said — 

" It would be in vain to attempt an enumeration of all 
the works now going on quietly in parishes under the 
direction of the clergy — works of which the world knows 
nothing beyond the limits of the parish. 1 will mention 
the works going on in one metropolitan parish, the report 
of which lies before me. (1) The whole machinery of 
confirmation, including classes in which young and old 
are prepared ; (2) instruction classes, in which the Scrip- 
tures are taught and good books circulated ; (3) a provident 
club ; (4) working classes, in which the poor are taught 
habits of industry ; (5) parochial mission ; (6) a society 
for aid during illness ; (7) a society for visiting the poor 
and aiding their distress ; (8) a society for aiding church 
singing ; (9) guilds for men and old and young women, 
and promoting their religious welfare ; (10) mothers' 
meetings for the study of good books ; (11) dispensaries 
and aids for the sick ; (12) a society for district visitors 
and their meetings ; (13) meetings for school teachers and 
Sunday school teachers ; (14) ragged and night schools, 
and their support ; (15) soup kitchen for the poor ; 
(16) societies for waifs and strays, or children deserted 
by their parents ; (17) working men's benefit societies ; 
(18) multitudinous Christian charities supported by en- 
dowment or subscription ; (19) needlework society ; (20) 
penny banks ; (21) young men's friendly society for pro- 
moting wholesome amusement for Sunday evenings ; (22) 
juvenile guild — a branch of the same ; (23) a confraternity 
society for communicants ; (24) young men's friendly 
society; (25) a branch of the C. E. T. S. ; (26) a society 
in aid of the propagation of the gospel. Such are the 
works going on quietly and unostentatiously in connection 
with one Church." * 

On every hand clergymen with the courage to speak 
and act in accordance with their convictions are coming to 
the front. Writing to the late Archbishop Tait of Canter- 
* Church of England Temperance Chronicle, November 24, 1883. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 423 

bury, in July, 1882, Canon Basil Wilberforce denonnced church pro- 
tbe holding by tlie Charcli of property in pablic-bouses. f"p5lJ[ic!.^ 
Since then, in various places, public -bouses belonging to houses, 
the Church have been closed. 

Says the Temperance Record (N'ovember 8, 1883) — 

" A public-house of ratber a low class, the Golden Practical ex- 
Lion, in Grravel Lane, Southwark, has lately been vacated the Eccksf- 
by its tenant, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, to ^^1^^^^^™" 
whom the premises belong, m their desire to minimize their of their in- 
interest in public-house property, have let it for half the promoUo^of 
rent offered hy a firm of hreiuers to Mr. Fegan, of the Boys' temperance 
Home, Southwark, who proposes to open it as a place of tlonlnm- 
recreation for working boys in this densely crowded -^^'""^^^ >^ 
district, so that it will become a boon instead of a pest vember 8, 
to the neighbourhood. The Golden Lion adjoins Mr. ■^^^^^• 
Fegan's Home, and is now being rapidly prepared for its 
new career." 

The Dean of Westminster recently told me that he had 
closed and pulled down a public-house in Westminster. 

The most important aud most difficult question which The question 
confronts the Church is that of the use of wine in the ^^ine^n^h? 
Lord's Supper. Numbers of clergymen have, in obedience Lord's 
to their convictions, introduced into this rite in their own 
churches the use of non-intoxicating instead of intoxicating 
wine. I have been told that the Bishop of London grants 
absolute freedom to the clergy of his diocese as to the 
character of the wine used in the Communion. 

In the Convocations of Canterbury last July (1883) 
the subject came up for decision. 

An appeal was made from the Lower House " praying " The decision 
that the Upper House should " take such measures as they HoiIseS^th" 
may deem best for checking such innovation " (of using Convocations 
unfermented wine in the Lord's Supper). In the answer bury^jui'y, 
we read, " This House is of opinion that agitation of any i^^^- 
question on so sacred a subject is much to be deprecated, 
as tending to distress many religious persons, to unsettle 
the weak, and even to lead to schism ; that it is quite 
unnecessary to raise the question referred to in the 
gravamen, inasmuch as the Church, though always in- 
sisting on the use of wine in the Holy Communion, has 
never prescribed the strength or weakness of the wine to 
be used, and, consequently, it is always possible to deal 



424 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Modern dis- 
coveries — 
as to the 
nature and 
effects of 
alcoliol — 
leave no 
alternative 
to the 



wifcli even extreme cases without departing from the 
custom observed by the Church ; and that it is, there- 
fore, most convenient that the clergy should conform to 
ancient and unbroken usage, and should discountenance, 
all attempts to deviate from it " {Chronicle of Convocation, 
1883)* 

Thus the representative body of the Church of England, 
though deprecating agitation on the subject of the use of 
unfermented wine, does not positively condemn it. This 
is a great step, because this issue, once having become 
debatable, there can be no doubt as to its ultimate settle- 
ment. Both intoxicating and unfermented wines were used 
by the Jews in the time of Christ, but we possess no know- 
ledge whether the wine used by Jesus in the last supper 
was intoxicating or unfermented. The best Hebrew 
authorities, living and past, either regard intoxicating or 
unfermented wines as equally lawful in Passover, or lean 
in the direction of the unfermented, inasmuch as fermented 
(leavened) food was forbidden at Passover. Therefore 
either complete liberty as to the use of intoxicating or un- 
fermented wines at the Lord's Supper must be granted, or, 
to be consistent, the use of wine at all must be abandoned. 

But aside from the question of the nature of the wine 
used by Jesus, modern discoveries as to the nature and 
effects of alcohol leave but one alternative in the use of 
wine to any conscientious clergyman. 

Jesus, when He took the cup and asked His disciples to 
drink in remembrance of Him, was the same Jesus who 
the cross that He might save sinners, was the 



on 



conscientious (5jg(J 

same ISTazarene who, in His own prayer, teaches His 
disciples, ^^ Lead us not into temptation," who, in His agony 
in the garden, begged His disciples to watch and pray 
against temptation ; was the same Jesus who sternly told 
His disciples that it was better for a man to pluch out his 
eye or cut off his hand rather than that his whole body should 
he cast into hell; was the same who said, " Woe unto the 
world because of off^ences, for it must needs be that offences 
come, but woe to that m,an by who'in the offence com^eth.'^ 

Would He who spake these things desire the use of 
intoxicating drink in sacramental commemoration of Him ? 

A writer in the Church Quarterly Review early last 
* See chapter xi., pp. 301, 302. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 425 

year asserts tliat the belief in tlie efficacy of tlie sacrament 
will protect the believer from harm. What authority is 
there for such an assertion ? Has any promise been given 
anywhere in the Bible to that effect ? (And what imputa- 
tion on the character of this sacred rite lies in the mere 
suggestion that special divine intervention is essential to 
the safety of one participating in it ! ) Certainly, the saddest 
facts of almost daily experience disprove such assertions. 

To the reformed drunkard, alcohol is like the taste of 
blood to the tamed lion or tiger. What shall be done for 
those innumerable ones, who, knowing their inherited 
predisposition to drink, can keep away from the public- 
honse only so long as they do not approach the communion 
table ? 

As long ago as 1826, the Rev. Moses Stewart (Prof, of The Rev. 
Theology in Andover College, Mass., U.S.A.), in his Wines stewarton 
and Strong Drinks of the Ancient Hebrews, arrived at the *"t^^ ^^**^" 
conclusion that " it is a matter of expediency and duty for qualification 
our churches not to admit members in the future except ^giJ^ersWp 
on the ground of total abstinence from the use of intoxi- 
cating liquors and from all traffic in them." 

The Rev. B. Parsons, in his Anti-Bacchus (London, The Rev. b. 
1840), says, "We ought to substitute an innocent beverage theTJrfstalit 
for the poison which is now used at the Lord's table. . . . "^^^ ,"]" 
!N^ot long ago a reformed drunkard, and apparently a con- attendance at 
verted man, approached the Lord's table of a church which ttie Lord's 
I could name ; mark the result. The wine tasted at the 
sacred Communion revived the. old passion, and he, who 
seemed a saint, was corrupted by the sacramental wine, 
went home, got drunk, and died a drunkard." 

Mr. E. C. Delavan, in his Temperance Essays (]S"ew Mr. e. c. 
York, 1866), in Letter 11, Relative to Gomtnunion Wiyie, theuse^of'^ 
written in 1841, says, " Let us illustrate the sacrament of J^'*^^ ^^ ^]^^ 
the Supper by the water used in baptism. What Christian 
parent would be willing to have such substances as com- 
pose the liquor generally used at the Supper mingled with 
the water with which his infant child is baptized ? Pure 
water is the only proper symbol of baptism. The pure 
blood of the grape, for the Supper." 

In the Concordance of Scripture and Science (London, Archdeacon 
1847), Mr. Peter Burne, in speaking of the use of in- BomSy,''^ 
toxicants at the Communion, quotes the following remarks on the same. 



426 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The Lord 
Bishop of 
Exeter on 
the same. 



Canon 
Wilberforce 
on the same. 



made by Arclideacon Jeffreys, of Bombay : — "We agree to 
abstain fromi all intoxicating drinks, except in a religious 
ordinance, the plain interpretation of wbicli is, tbat sucb 
mischievous liquors are too bad to be used anywhere bnt 
at the Lord's Supper. ... So long as intoxicating wine is 
dealt round at the comrannion table, the reclaimed 
drunkard (as well as anybody in danger of becoming one 
— who is sure?) has of right no business there, for the 
sacred place is as morally unfit for him as the taproom 
and the gin palace ... It is a mockery of God to pray for 
deliverance from evil and temptation while abandoning 
oneself to it with open eyes." 

The Lord Bishop of Exeter, who, in the Upper House 
of Convocations, seconded the above-quoted decision as to 
the use of wine in the Holy Eucharist, in an address at the 
Guildhall (October 17, 1883), said, "The temptations of 
the flesh are generally very strong, if they are near, and 
when such temptations were near to some men, their 
strength seemed to desert them altogether. The only 
thing they could do was to get away and keep away from 
such temptations altogether. Drunkards who had fallen 
under this particular temptation of the flesh must be, if 
they were to recover themselves at all, total abstainers." 

Does this mean that the very ones who stand in 
greatest need of the consolation and help of the most 
sacred religious rites shall be shut out of it? Or does it 
mean that the form of the rite must be modified, to meet 
the need of those for whom it was first instituted ? * 

Canon Wilberforce answers these questions. Replying 

* Eer. James Sinith, in his work on The Temperance Reformation 
and its claims upon the Christian Church (London, 1875), proposes : — 

" The general adoption of the pure juice of the grape," and thinks 
that it would be well " if the churches could agree to adopt it both 
as appropriate in itself and as a protest against the intemperance 
that prevails." 

If the use of unfermented grape juice, even as an ordinary 
beverage, could gradually replace the use of fermented liquors, it 
would possibly, more than any other purely physical agent except 
water, counteract and overcome the vitiated taste created by our long 
use of alcoholic drinks. 

There is, as far as I know, but one establishment in England 
where genuine unfermented wine is to be procured, and that is at 
Franlc Wright's manufactory in South Kensington. It is claimed that 
some two thousand churches now use it. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 427 

to the Rev. C. R. Chase, he remarked " that lie had 
known terribly real and undoubted instances in which 
men, by partaking of wine from the sacramental cup, had 
been started on their downward course to a dishonoured 
grave. If it came to be a question whether the wine or 
the Christian should be banished from the table of the 
Lord, he could not hesitate a moment as to which should 
go. From the sacramental table over which he had more 
immediate control intoxicating wine had now long been 
banished, and in this he believed they were carrying out 
the true spirit and meaning of the sacrament. If it was 
not a spiritual communion with the blessed Lord, beyond 
and above anything the mere elements could convey, then 
it failed in the great purpose for which it was ordained." * 

Will any one say that it is by Christ's command that various im- 
the Communion is used as the bulwark and the recruiting Pj^g^^^^-^^jJ^r' 
office of the public-house? "If good people can take involved in 
intoxicating drink at the communion table on Sunday," 5°Jn_^^^^" 
says the liquor seller, and all those who want a good 
excuse for drinking, " there can be no great harm in a 
glass at home, or even at the public-house." 

Surely this consideration alone ought to suffice to 
banish alcoholic di^ink from the sacrament. 

No doubt many clergymen and many Christians shrink 
with sincere piety from making any change in the sacra- 
mental rite, regarding it to have been taught and founded, 
as now observed, by the Master Himself ; but will not all 
personal shrinking, all minor scruples give way to the 
larger and holier shrinking which must accompany our 
knowledge, that alcohol is now proved to be a poison 
which ruins body and soul ? It cannot be inappropiate to 
say " minor scruples," since we are authoritatively assured 
that the Church " has never prescribed the strength or 
weakness of the wine to be used." 

If the Church does insist upon the custom of using 
alcoholic drink in the Communion, many, if not all, 
conscientious persons may be driven to abstain from the 
Lord's Supper, if not on their own account, lest offence 
come through +h em to others. 

Is it not better that " ancient and unbroken usage " in 
this respect should be deviated from, in order that the 
* League Journal, November, 3, 1883. 



428 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



ancient and unbroken usage of sin may be overcome, in tlie 
rite that remembers Him ? 



Dr. Chan- 
ning on 
drink 
cubtoms. 



The origin 
and age of 
the drink 
customs. 



Strutt on the 
same. 



§ 96. Tbe principal part for society to take in the 
battle against drink is the abolition of the drink customs. 

" In proportion as ardent spirits are banisbed from our 
bouses, our tables, our hospitalities," said Dr. Channing 
(op. cit.\ "in the proportion that those who have influence 
and authority in the community abstain themselves and 
lead their dependents to abstain from their use, the tempta- 
tions to drink must disappear. It is objected, I know, 
that if we give up what others will abuse, we must give 
up everything, because there is nothing which men will 
not abuse. I grant that it is not easy to define the limits 
at which concessions ought to stop. Were we called upon 
to relinquish an important comfort of life because others 
were perverting it into an instrument of crime and woe, 
we should be bound to pause and deliberate before we 
acted. 

" But no such plea can be set up in the case before us. 
Ardent spirits are not an important comfort and in no 
degree a necessity. They give no strength, they contribute 
nothing to help. They neither aid men to bear the burden 
nor discharge the duties of life." 

The drink customs are very difficult to eradicate. They 
have grown through the ages and become ingrained with 
the growth of national and social life and institutions, and 
in no country have they struck root so deeply as in England. 

History relates that the Danish conquerors punished 
with death any native who drank in their presence with- 
out permission. Some writers claim that the custom of 
pledging health originated at that time. Strutt, in his 
Manners and Customs of Ancient Britaiji, says— 

" The meaning of a pledge was a security for the safety 
of the individual drinking, who all the time was exposed 
to the attack of an enemy by his arm being raised to his 
head, his face partly covered, and his body unprotected. 
When, therefore, a person was about to drink, he asked 
the guest next to him if he would pledge him, and being 
answered in the affirmative, the sword or dagger was raised 
to protect him while drinking." 

And this custom, sign of England's degradation under 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 429 

the heel of her conqueror, not only was not dropped with 
the slavery that imposed it, but outlived it, and by some 
mysterious process got transposed into such a sign of 
glorification at both official and private banquets, that to 
omit it has until very recently been considered almost 
tantamount to treason to the throne and the altar of 
personal friendship ! 

There are many drink customs. At the Temperance 
Congress of 1862, a paper was issued enumerating four 
hundred drink laws and usages ; * but the principal and 
universally observed drink custom is that of drinking to 
the health and success of persons and undertakings. 

In chapter xi, it was shown how drinking originated 
at Court, and afterwards became the vice of the masses ; 
and how much might be hoped from the initiative of the 
Court in temperance reform. 

It would seem as if this responsibility was becoming felt 
at Court. In his address to the York Licensed Victuallers' 
Association, February 8, 1881, the Lord Mayor of York 
said he had accepted tbe invitation of the association with 
much pleasure, especially when they had been so courteous 
as to give him the liberty to refresh himself with whatever 
beverage he thought proper. It reminded him of an 
occasion when some one dining at her Majesty's table was The Queen's 
drinking water, and it was pointed out to her Majesty, tfjgoc^j^^" 
who replied, " There is no compulsion at my table." bondage of 

At the great Scottish Temperance Convention held in ^^^^^^J^'^^^j^gj. 
Glasgow on the 28th of April, 1884, Mr. Robert Rae, the insight into 
secretary of the National Temperance League, said — - Lnge^rs from 

" It often happens that the Queen dines many people, ^"nk, and 
and I am glad to state that a good number of the guests with temper- 
are teetotalers. Especially is this the case amongst her ance reform, 
chaplains ; and to show that the temperance movement is 
spreading in the Queen's establishment, I may say that 

* A great mimber of these are mentioned with the special 
penalties to be inflicted on those who break them. As recently as 
last June (1883) the papers furnish an account of how a labourer 
named Ellis, an abstainer, was maltreated because he refused to stand 
treat. " A pair of clamps — pieces of wood fastened by a screw in the 
middle — were placed on his neck, and he was held till signs of 
suffocation were apparent. He was then released, but he was in such 
a condition that he had to be taken to the infirmary, where he 
remains." 



430 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

the last two house cliaplains wlio were appointed were 
total abstainers. It is a significant fact that nearly all 
the new bishops recently created in the Church of 
England have been total abstainers." 

In her book, My Holidays in the Highlands, 1862-1882 
(London, 1884), the Queen identifies herself in a very 
simple and effective manner with the cause of temperance 
reform. In referring to the work of her " dear and valued 
friend," the late Dr. Norman Macleod, she mentions with 
especial interest his sermon on the 2nd of October, 1870, 
in these words : — 

" Dr. Macleod gave us such a splendid sermon on the 
war, and without mentioning France he said enough to 
make every one understand what was meant, when he 
pointed out how God would punish wickedness, and 
vanity, and sensuality ; and the chapters he read from. 
Isaiah xxviii.,* and from Ezekiel, Amos, and one of the 
Psalms, were really quite wonderful for the way in which 
they seemed to describe France." 

Such expressions are a touching revelation of her 
Majesty's anxiety concerning the condition of things in 
her own realm, which has been practically evinced also by 
her becoming patron of the Church of England Temper- 
ance Society. 

* " 1. Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of Ephraim, 
whose glorious beauty is a fading flower, which are on the head of 
the fat valleys of them that are overcome with wine. 

" 2. Behold, the Lord hath a mighty and strong one, which as a 
tempest of hail and a destroying storm, as a food of mighty waters 
overflowing, shall cast down to the earth with the hand. 

" 3. The crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim, shall be 
trodden under feet. 

" 7. But they also have erred through wine, and through strong 
drink are out of the way ; the priest and the prophet have erred 
through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of 
the way through strong drink ; they err in vision, they stumble 
through judgment. 

" 15. Because ye have said. We have made a covenant with death, 
and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing sconrge 
shall pass through, it shall not come unto us : for we have made lies 
our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves. 

"16. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, . . . 

*' 17. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to 
the plummet : and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and 
the waters shall overflow the hiding-place." — Isaiah xxviii. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 431 

Thus it is seen that drink customs are no longer 
a matter of rigorous observance at court. The Queen her- 
self has clone the temperance cause the inestimable service 
of removing from the relations between host and guests, 
from social etiquette and good manners, the burden of an 
irksome obligation, in the exchange of social amenities ; 
and society is no longer shielded under the pretence of 
loyalty nor by the code of good breeding, in using her 
formidable weapons of ridicule and satire against those 
who seek, by appropriate means, to liberate themselves and 
others from the evils of drink. 

From a paper on Freemasonry and Temperance in the The interpst 
Western Morning News, the Good Templars Watchword bythe Prince 
(January 28, 1884) quotes the following, showing the t^e^i^p^taUe 
interest felt by the Prince of Wales in temperance reform:— reform. 

" Lodges can choose as to when and where members 
shall take refreshments, and as to what shall be included 
or excluded in connection with those refreshments. 
Acting upon that privilege, a movement is progressing 
in the order for lodge to decree that no intoxicating 
liquors shall at any time be permitted to be introduced at 
their refreshment boards ; and, in some instances, new 
lodges are being formed with a clause in their bye-laws to 
this effect. Such an one, on a large scale, was opened at 
Manchester in the beginning of last year, and now the 
three towns are about to follow the same course. A 
suggestion was made a few months since among a few of 
the temperance brethren that it would be worth while to 
ascertain if such a lodge could not be established there, 
and on the question being put to the test, they were 
astonished at the popularity of the movement. With 
scarce an effort over sixty masons, nearly all of several 
years' standing, and embracing numerous P.M.'s and 
provincial officers, came forward at once as being desirous 
to become members of the new lodge. The proposition 
was then submitted to the heads of the order in the three 
towns, when the whole of them, with, it is believed, only 
one exception, signed a recommendation that a warrant 
for the new lodge should be granted. The Provincial 
Grand Master added his recommendation, and now the 
information has been received that the Prince of Wales, 
M.W. Grand Master, has been pleased to grant a warrant 



432 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



the condition 
of the poor 
and in 
temperance 
reform. 



for tlie holding of the said lodge under title of ' The St. 
George, No. 2025.' The membership is not confined to 
pledged teetotalers, nor will any attempt be made to so 
limit it. At all its banquets and entertainments every 
endeavour will be made to make the social gatherings 
enjoyable, but without the aid of alcohol. The three 
principal officers named in the warrant will be provincial 
officers, whio are total abstainers — the W.M. for twenty- 
eight years, the S.W. for eighteen years, and tbe J.W. a 
life-long abstainer. There were nearly fifty petitioners for 
the new lodge, and many of the brethren are active ' blue 
ribbonists ' and total abstainers." 
The interest At the distribution of prizes to the children of ele- 

theTateDuke Kicntary schools by the Liverpool Council of Education 
of Albany in (January 26, 1884), the late Duke of Albany* presiding, in 
speaking of improved cookery and coffee taverns, said — 

" I should like to see a rapid lift given to the standard 
of cleanliness and care in the preparation of food in the 
poorest homes. T should like to see meals w^hich are now 
mere scrambles become points of real family union — 
occasions for showing forethought and kindliness and self- 
respect. And where circumstances make this too difficult, 
I should like to see the family enjoying a cheap and decent 
meal together at the cofPee tavern, instead of the father 
being at the alehouse and the wife and children with a 
crust at home. And I think that if we can train the 
children early to see the difference between what dirt and 
waste and selfishness make of a poor man's dinner, and 
what thrift and care and cleanliness can make of it at the 
same cost, we shall be civilizing them almost more directly 
than by our sums or our grammar, and shall be taking in 
flank our great enemy, drink — drink, the only terrible 
enemy whom England has to fear." f 

Public bodies also are beginning to manifest a sense of 
responsibility in this direction. 

At the annual dinner of the Metropolitan Board of 

* The late Duke of Albany was for nine years patron of the 
Oxford Diocesan Branch and a president of the Church of England 
Temperance Society. — Annual Report Church of England Temperance 
Society, 1884. 

t The Duke of Connaught ascribes his good health during the 
Egyptian campaign to his abstention from the use of intoxicating 
liquor. 



The practi- 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 438 

Works, April, 1883, the imperative toasts of loyalty, etc., cai inaugu- 
were drunk in water. SnTing 

At the inauguration of the Society for the Stady toasts in 
and Cure of Inebriety (Rooms of the Medical Society Sop^oman 
of London, April 25, 1884), at which about one hundred Board of 
physicians were present, the toasts were drunk in un- Apdi.^isss. 
fermented wines. Toasts 

,In this struggle against the pnblic di^ink customs, the unfemirnted 
remembrance of their inherent absurdities ought to weigh wines at the 
greatly with intelligent people. Knd^^of o7 

"It is not usual," says the German Prince Pnckler tiie Society 
(according to Dr. Grindrod, op. cit.), " to take wine during and Cure of 
diuner in England without drinking to another person. ^^^5^2?' 
When you. raise your glass, you. look fixedly at the one i884. 
with whom you are drinking, bow your head, and then The German 
drink with great gTavity. Certainly many customs of the pSTer on 
South Sea Islanders, which strike us the most, are less tiie absm-di- 
Indicrous. It is esteemed a civility to challenge anybody drink 
-in this way to drink ; a messenger is often sent from one customs. 
end of the table to the other to announce to B that A 
wishes to take wine with him, whereupon each, and some- 
times with considerable trouble, catches the other's eye, 
and goes through the ceremony of the prescribed nod with 
great formality, looking at the moment very like a Chinese 
mandarin." 

"Never perhaps," says the Rev. B. Parsons (op. cit.), The Rev. b. 
" was there a more irrational or absurd practice. As th/same°^^ 
though we could not express our loyalty to the Queen, our 
good wishes to the bishops, clergy, and Church, or our 
affection to our friends and country, without swallowing 
a portion of poison ! In thousands of instances, love of 
drink, not love to the monarch, is the origin of the toast, 
and those who are most noisy with their ' three times 
three ' are swallowing their money, their morality, their 
loyalty and patriotism all at the same time. Some of 
these would curse God and the king for a pot of beer, and 
others ruined by drinking and toasting are ready for any- 
thing that would mend their affairs and get them some 
drink. The most disloyal and disaffected of our country- 
men are those who have beggared themselves by drinking. 
It is impossible to tell the crime and misery which drink- 
ing of toasts has originated. Louis XIV. of France is said 

2 F 



434 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

to liave foreseen tlie consequences, and to have proliibited 
the drinking of toasts." 
A working In 1864, A Working Man pnblislied a trencliant little 

same!*^ ^ pamphlet entitled Philosophy of Toasts and Health Drinking, ^ 
from wbich. I quote the following : — • 

" The toast is applied to the health of the living, and 
to the memory of the dead ; to things far and near, past, 
present, and to come ; through every department in all 
the affairs of life, and prevails among all classes of society, 
from the peer who toasts the Queen's health to the beggar 
who drinks the publican's health with his last penny. . . . 
The simple ' Luck ! ' of the poor gives way to the toast in 
society. A gentleman stands on his feet and expatiates in 
glowing terras, it may be on the virtues of the Queen, or 
some other great one present or absent, living or dead, 
and, whatever the toast may be, the speaker is sure to 
conclude his speech by requiring the company to empty 
their glasses for the success, health, or happiness of the 
subject of the toast. If there existed any connection 
between the real and the possible, between that which the 
company desires to honour or promote, so that the one 
could be regarded as the cause and the other as the effect, 
or the one the means and the other the end, then there 
might be some show in reason for the practice, and so far 
a palliation of the evils resulting from excess. . . . But 
where is the connection between health and prosperity 
and the act of drinking strong liquor or wine ? Suppose 
a doctor took it into his head some fine morning, that 
instead of going out to visit his patients as usual, he would 
swallow pills to their health in the laboratory, and that 
he did so. He swallowed a pill to the health of each in 
succession, according to the order of his visits. ' Well, 
here goes a pili for the health of the man with the broken 
' arm,' etc. Twenty-two pills in all ! What would be the 
state of the doctor ? what that of the patients ? and what 
would be said of his actions ? " 

Let us substitute for toasting with wine some kind of 

spice, salt or pepper, and the absurdity of toasting becomes 

as absurd in appearance as it is in fact. 

TheRev. "The habit of toast-drinking, whether public or 

James Smith private," savs the Rev. James Smith,* " is one which only 

on the same, r ' ^ ' J 

* Temperance Reformation and its claims v/pon the Christian 
Church (Loudon, 1875). 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 435 

long-estaUislied usage and familiarity enable us to regard 
as otherwise tlian higlily ridicnloas, and in every way un- 
worthy of an enlightened and civilized community. Does 
anybody really imagine that the Qaeen enjoys better 
health, that the army and navy are in a more flourishing 
condition, that the Church, the Press, or the Government 
do their work more efficiently because they are so frequently 
and enthusiastically ' toasted ' ? Is there any rational 
connection between the good wishes entertained and the 
mode in which they receive expression ? If any one really 
supposed that the person or subject in hand would prosper 
all the better in proportion to the frequency and enthusiasm 
of the toasting and the quantity of liquor consumed in the 
process, there would be some excuse for his indulging in 
the practice, whatever might be thought of his intellectual 
development ! There was more reason, if less civilization, 
in the action of the African mentioned by Dr. Livingstone, 
who emptied his snuff-box at the foot of a tree, in order to 
ensure the success of his comrades, who were engaged in 
an elephant hunt ! He, poor savage ! performed this 
ceremony ignorantly and superstitiously, believing that it 
would have some real efficacy ; while we, enlightened 
Christians ! perform an analogous heathenish ceremony, 
knowing it to be meaningless and vain. If health-drinking 
were confined to the health-giving beverage, water, the 
folly of the custom would speedily become apparent to 
all, and the practice would soon be numbered among the 
antiquarian relics of a barbarous age." 

There are many trade usages still extensively prevalent, 
which tend to create and foster a love for strong drink, 
and are, consequently, instrumental in promoting intemper- 
ance among those concerned. Among such customs may 
be mentioned the payment of wages at public-houses, whereby 
many are brought into temptation, the ycung and in- 
experienced become the prey of confirmed inebriatps, and 
those who may be desirous to reform have difficulties 
thrown in the way of their doing so. 

Thanks to the efforts of the Hon. Samuel Morley, M.P., Successor 
in the Commons,-iand of the Earls Stanhope and Shaftes- samueT* 
bury in the Lords, this mischievous practice was abolished Moiiey,M.P., 

11 • • c T ooo and of Earls 

m the spring session ol 188d. Shaftesbury 

Besides the drinking customs and usages, there are the and stanhope 



436 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



in securing 
the abolition 
of the cus- 
tom of the 
payment of 
wages at 
public- 
houses. 

The Rev. 
William 
Moister 
on the 
variety and 
prevalence 
of social 
drinking 
habits. 



social drinking liabits to combat. Tlie Rev. William 
Moister, in Ms book, The Evil and the Bemedy (London, 
1877), well describes their variety and prevalence in the 
following words : — 

"Intoxicating drink, in some form or other, • bas at 
length come to be used on a variety of occasions, the very 
mention of wbicb is somewhat startling, when we consider 
its character and tendency. It is frequently given to 
working men and others by employers of labour, to stimnlate 
them to greater exertion in the discharge of their respective 
duties. It is introduced at almost all public and festive 
gatherings ; at marriages, baptisms, and funerals ; at sales, 
contracts, and friendly meetings ; and, in many otherwise 
well-regulated families, spirits, wine, ale, or porter, are 
placed on the table every day as common beverage at meal- 
times as well as on other occasions. In many localities 
the hospitality of the host is measured by the frequency 
and earnestness with which he presses the intoxicating 
cup on the attention of his guests. As soon as you arrive 
at the dwelling of your friend, the all-important question 
is put, " What will you take to drink ? " If you are weary 
with your journey, you are urged to take a glass of wine, 
beer, or other stimulating drink to refresh you ; if you are 
cold, it is recommended to warm you ; and if you are warm, 
it is represented as a cooling beverage. By some it is 
taken before dinner to create an appetite : at meals as a 
dilutant of food ; afterwards to aid digestion ; and imme- 
diately before going to bed to induce sleep. 

" In fact, alcoholic liquor, in somie form, has come to be 
regarded by many as a common necessary of life ; and as 
such it is procured and kept in store for ordinary use, the 
same as bread, butter, meat, and other provisions. If a 
. journey has to be taken, as a matter of course, the familiar 
bottle is replenished with the favourite liquid and placed 
in the basket or pocket with other refreshments. You 
cannot travel far by rail or otherwise, without being pain- 
fully reminded of the degeneracy of our race, and of the 
fearful extent to which the drinking customs of our 
country prevail among all classes." 

It is, of course, necessary, in order to make headway 
against these most widely observed and popular drink 
customs and habits, to inspire a healtliy public sentiment. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 437 

ill whicli their contimiance shall be clearlj seen to be both 
ridiculous and wrong. 

In his paper on The Wine Question of Society (Scrihner^s Dr. J. G. 
Monthly, Angnst, 1872), the late Dr. J. G. Holland pro- Se"utyo? 
posed a method for arousino^ such healthy public sentiment society in 

• ■• •• this resDGct 

in these words : " Society bids us furnish wines at our 
feasts, and we furnish them just as generously as if we did 
not know that a certain percentage of all the men who 
drink it will die miserable drunkards, and will inflict 
pitiful sufferings on those who are closely associated with 
them. . . . What w^e need is a declaration of independence. 
There are a great many good men and women who lament 
the drinking habits of society most sincerely. Let these 
all declare that they will minister no longer at the altar 
of the great destroyer. Let them declare that the indis- 
criminate offer of wine at dinners and social assemblies is 
not only criminal but vulgar, as it undoubtedly is. Let 
them declare, for the sake of the young, the weak, and 
-vicious — for the sake of personal character, and family 
peace, and social purity, and national strength, that they 
will discard wine from their feasts from this time forth 
and for ever, and the w^ork will be done. , . . If the men 
and women of good society wish to have less drinking to 
excess, let them stop drinking moderately. If they are 
not willing to break off the indulgence of a feeble appetite 
for the sake or doing a great good to a great many people, 
how can they expect a poor broken-down wretch to deny 
an appetite that is stronger than the love of wife and 
children, and even life itself ? " 

Perhaps no moral cause ever came up for general con- 
sideration more requiring the uncompromising action that 
is here suggested than the cause of temperance, or more 
in need of the conciliating influence of perfect good breed- 
ing and inexhaustible patience on the part of its upholders, 
or one more endangered by irritating, unenlightened 
prejudiced opinion, or having more to hope from the right 
exercise of enlightened and noble public sentiment.* 



§ 97. In his Temperance Address at Boston (1846), Dr. Chapin 
Rev. Dr. Chapin exclaimed — sponslbnity 

" Who stand between the temperance movement and of wealth tor 
* See chapter xi. pp. 300, 301. 



438 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



the preva- 
lence of the 
drink evil. 



Lord Claud 
Hamilton's 
Btatement in 
St. James's 
Hall (May 
19, 1870), 
about a pro- 
hibition 
estate in 
Tyrone. 



The evidence 
of Mr. T. W. 
Kussell on 
the prohibi- 
tion estate of 
Bessbrook. 



its triumpli ? I answer the wealthy, the fashionable, the 
influential. The rum power in our country is backed up 
by the money power. Mammon and alcohol go hand in 
hand." This was true then. How much more true it is 
to-day, and truer still of Great Britain than of the. United 
States ? 

Indeed, the whole wealth of England is in so com- 
paratively few hands that practically the magnates, by 
refusing the renewal of leases for public-houses on their 
estates, could, in a very few years, establish an almost 
complete prohibition, and, therefore, the wealth of this 
country must be largely responsible for the fate of the 
English temperance movement. But there are hopeful 
signs that this responsibility is being rightly felt. 

At St. James's Hall (May 19, 1870), Lord Claud 
Hamilton, Bx-M.P., said about a prohibition estate of some 
10,000 population in County Tyrone, Ireland, " the result 
has been that whereas those high-roads were, in former 
times, constantly the scenes of strife and drunkenness, 
necessitating the presence of a very considerable number 
of police to be located in the district, at present there is 
not a single policeman in the district. The poor rates are 
half what they were before, and all the police and magis- 
trates testify to the great absence of crime." Mr. Richard- 
son's flax-mills at Bessbrook, on the Belfast and Dublin 
railway, near Newry, are well known. 

I quote here at length from the report of the evidence 
given by Mr. T. W. Russell, of Dublin, and Mr. J. G. 
Richardson, the proprietor of Bessbrook, before the Lords' 
Committee on Intemperance (1880), as given in the Alliance 
News (May 15, 1880). Says Mr. Russell, "Bessbrook 
was got possession of by Mr. John Grubb Richardson in 
1847. It was just a hamlet of a few small houses, and now 
he has built a very fine town there ; there is no such town 
in Ireland, so far as sanitary arrangements are concerned. 
He has made it a rule that he will let no house for the sale 
of drink in any form, and, as a matter of fact, there has 
never been a drop of drink sold in Bessbrook since Mr. 
Richardson got possession of it. It is situated in the 
county of Armagh, three miles from Newry. JS^ewry is 
a town of 14,000 inhabitants. Mr. Richardson has a large 
mill at Bessbrook, which employs the whole of the people. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 489 

There lias never been a police-barrack, nor a policeman, nor 
a pawn-office in Bessbrook. I have a letter from the 
inspector of police at ISTewry, stating that there were only 
three cases of drunkenness from Bessbrook during the 
eighteen months previous to his writing, and I am very 
much of opinion that those were cases of farmers going 
home from l!^ewry and passing through Bessbrook on 
their way ; but there everything is peace, prosperity, and 
comfort. It was submitted to the vote by ballot of the 
householders two years ago as a test, whether they would 
prefer a public-house being admitted or not, and the vote 
Avas nine to one against the introduction of public-houses. 
There is a district, in county Tyrone, covering sixty- one 
and a half square miles ; it adjoins the town of Dungannon, 
and goes near to Cookstown, covering three great public 
roads. I lived in the town of Dungannon for five years, 
and there were public-houses on that territory when I first 
went there ; but Mr. John Kinley Tener, who became the 
agent of the properties in the district, refused, I believe, 
to renew the leases of public-houses, and, as a matter of 
fact, the public-houses vanished. There were police- 
barracks in the centre ; they were closed in twelve months 
afterwards, and the policemen removed. The poor rates 
came down from Is. 4^d. and Is. Qd. in the pound in the 
different townlands to 5cZ., Qd.., and 8cZ. Of late a spirit 
grocer has forced himself in upon the borders of that 
district ; the magistrates resolutely refused a license within 
the district, in order to keep the. district clear ; but a spirit 
grocer has planted himself, in defiance of the public opinion 
of the place, right on the border of the place, and I con- 
ceive that he will do damage there. That I conceive a 
very great hardship. This range of country belongs to 
three proprietors. The population were not consulted, but 
I am bound to say when Mr. Tener gave up the agency 
some years ago, they presented him with a carriage and 
pair of horses, and an address, in which they referred to 
his action of clearing off the public-houses as one of the 
greatest blessings which had occurred in the locality, and 
hoped that his successor would take care that the same 
rule prevailed. The population is 10,000. Now, I would 
venture to say that if it is right to allow Mr. Richardson 
and Mr. Tener to have the power to say, as Mr. Richardson 



same. 



44iO THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

says, to 4000 people in Bessbrook, ' You shall not have 
a public-house for the sale of liquor, because I tliink it 
"will injure your interests and my interests,' and to carry 
out that rule, — I do not think it can be wrong to allow 
occupiers of property to say it, if they wish, to say it, in 
their localities." 
The evidence And this is Mr. Richardson's testimony : — 
Eichai-dson* " ^ ^^ ^^® Owner of some very extensive linen-mills at 

on the Bessbrook. It is a manufacturing town, containing about 

4000 people, largely employed in a factory built by the 
E/ichardson family, situated about two miles from JSTewry, 
in the county of Armagh. The trade principally carried 
on there is the spinning, weaving, and bleaching of linens and 
linen yarns of all kinds. About 3000 are employed in the 
general work of the concern, and 1500 outside in handloom 
weaving, etc. We began the concern in 1847, thirty-one 
years ago, and being then convinced that strong drink 
was the cause of serious injury, we resolved that no house 
for its sale should be established in our colony, and our 
experience has enabled us to prove that the absence of the 
liquor traffic has been a real blessing to our population. 
The result has been that we have been able to do without 
police, have no pawn-shops, and have very few people sent 
to the poorhouse, and have had no prostitution. I made 
inquiry before coming to give evidence before this com- 
mittee, and found that two persons, out of some 4000 
people, were in the poorhouse — one a weak-minded woman 
who came from Lurgan, twenty miles off, and who was for 
a time out of charity brought to our place. On referring 
to the poorhouse returns for last week, I found that there 
were eleven inside and nine outside persons receiving 
relief in our electoral division, called Camlough, containing 
more than 8000 people, while in Newry, a respectable 
and wealthy town near us, containing by the last census 
14,000 inhabitants, and which now probably contains 
16,000, there appear to be 126 inside and eleven outside 
paupers. In the town of Newry there are 127 public- 
houses, two spirit grocers, and fifteen to twenty wholesale 
dealers in the liquor trade, making 149 in all ; thus giving 
one dealer in liquor for every 126 persons, which shows 
six and a half times as many in proportion to our electoral 
division, which is really a poor one, including the village 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 441 

of Camlough, containing seven pnblic-liouses, which, no 
doubt, add to the poverty of our district. So far as I can 
remember, we have not had thirty cases before the bench 
of magisti-ates out of onr town of Bessbrook in the thirty- 
one years ; unfortunately, I have left behind me a letter I 
had from the late inspector of police on this subject. We 
have had more cases during the last two years in con- 
sequence of the increased facility of our people getting into 
N"ewry by new conveyances which have been recently 
established, and, perhaps, from our not having been so 
strict in choosing some new families. I may add that, 
considering the population, we have had during our 
time very few illegitimate births, and that the death-rate 
has been from 12 J to 14 J per 1000, and that, for a factory 
population, the committee will agree is a very small pro- 
portion. We have about 1000 children and young people 
on the Protestant sabbath school rolls, and a large number 
of our respectable young men and women teaching in 
them." 

There are several estates in England where for a long 
time no liquor-shops have been allowed ; in South Hamp- 
shire, for instance, near Winchester, there is said to be 
a manor of some two thousand acres, where, as far as is 
known, there never was a public-house." 

Heferring to the village of White Coppice, near Chorley, statement of 
Lancashire, before the House of Lords' Committee (1877- Ecdes'con- 

1878), Mr. A. E. EccleS said cerningthe 

" The first nine years 1 lived. in the village we had no ^fuage^o?" 
liquor-shops, and then for seventeen years we had liquor wwte Cop- 
shops, and for the last fifteen years we have been entirely 
without. Being young, I recollect very little about the 
first period, but during the seventeen years we had beer- 
shops in the village immorality was very common. I 
should say we had illegitimate children in every other 
house ; but during the last fifteen years we have had only 
two cases of illegitimacy, and we have had only one ille- 
gitimate child born in the village, and very little drunken- 
ness. That is a very striking contrast to the time when 
we had two beer-shops." 

Another vast and most successful estate in England The Saitaire 
where no liquors are allowed is Saitaire, owned by Titus estate. 
Salt, M.P. 



442 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The pro- 
hibition real 
estate com- 
panies, of 
Mr. John 
Eoberts in 
Liverpool, 
and the 
Artisans and 
Labourers 
General 
Dwelling 
Company 
in London. 



The Patl 
Mall Gazette 
on this point. 



There are in all, it is said, almost one thousand estates 
and villages in England where proprietary prohibition is 
enforced. 

Some large real estate companies, in London and 
Liverpool, wherever they extend their operations, e?;cliide 
the public-house. In Liverpool, the firm of Mr. John 
Roberts, M.P., for the Flintshire boroughs, hold vast 
amounts of property in the city, so that in 1882 the land 
laid out, or in course of being laid out by him, amounted 
to between 300 and 400 acres, with the number of about 
10,000 houses and a population of 60,000, and nowhere on 
the property in Mr. Roberts' hands is a public-house 
suffered to exist ; and Mr. Balfour, in his article in the 
Contemporary (August, 1879), speaking of Mr. Roberts' 
transactions, says that Mr. Roberts declares, " That he 
never yet heard of a complaint being made of the want of 
a public-house, either from the houseowners or the tenant. 
And it is well known how prosperous is that vast real 
estate company in Londou, the " Artisans and Labourers 
General Dwelling Company." Only last August they 
opened a new estate, the Noel Park Estate, the Earl of 
Shaftesbury presiding, and when only this estate is com- 
pleted, it will contain between 2000 and 3000 houses, with 
a population from 16,000 to 18,000. 

And they not only do not allow public-houses on their 
estates, but they even exercise what influence they can on 
neighbouring landowners to prevent the establishment of a 
cordon of public-houses around them. 



Mr. Hep- 
worth 
Dixon's 
description 



Commenting on the estates managed by the "Artisans' 
Labourers and General Dwelling Company," the Pall Mall 
Gazette says — 

" The most remarkable fact of all, however, is that on 
all these three large estates there is not a single pablic- 
house, and that the inhabitants not only do not demur to 
this regulation of the company, but actually congratulate 
themselves on the existing condition of affairs, and strenu- 
ously resist all attempts to open pablic-houses near the 
estates." 

Mr. David Lewis, in his The Brink Prohlem and its 
Solution (London, 1881), quotes the following graphic 
description — by the late Mr. Hepworth Dixon — of the 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 443 

practical application of prohibition in tlie town of St. of the results 
Johnsbuiy, Vermont : — ?k)n7n St." 

"Ko loafer bangs about tbe curbstone, not a beggar Joimsbury, 
can be seen, no drunkards reel along tbe streets, there *^™^^*- 
seem to be no poor. I have not seen in two days' wander- 
ing up and down one child in rags, one woman like a slut ; 
the men are all at work, the boys and girls at school. I 
see no broken panes of glass, no shingles hanging from 
the roof, no yard is left in an untidy state. What are the 
secrets of this artisans' paradise ? Why is the place so 
clean, the people so well housed and fed ? Why are little 
folks so hale in face, so smart in person, and so neat in 
dress ? All voices, I am bound to say, reply to me that 
these unusual yet desirable conditions in a workman's 
village spring from a strict enforcement of the law pro- 
hibiting the sale of intoxicatiDg drink." 

And the subjoined list of questions, asked by Mr. F. B. Successor 
Boyce, Hon. Secretary New South Wales Local Option in the town 
League, and recently answered by the chief clerk of the cf Pullman, 
town of Pullman, U.S.A., is full of pertinent interest : — 

" In what year was the city of Pullman founded ? 

"Answer: 27th May, 1880. 

"What is the population at present ? 

"Answer: 7500. 

" How many churches does it contain ? 

" Answer : Five have organizations here. 

" How many schools also, and teachers employed ? 

" Answer : Two school buildings, and thirteen public 
school teachers. 

" How many lock-ups or gaols ? 

" Answer : jN^one. 

" Number of magistrates, with amount of salaries ? 

" Answer : None. 

" Number of police, and their cost ? 

" Answer : One, at £12 a month. 

" What is the annual amount spent on relief of the 
poor ? 

" Answer : Nothing. 

" Can you furnish us with your statistics of crime ? 

"Answer : We have had no crime. 

" Have you any asylums, such as those for lunatics, 
orphans, benevolent, etc. ? 



444 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Temperance 
measures 
which might 
be adopted 
by the 

wealthy rail- 
way com- 
panies of 
Great Bri- 
tain. 

Dr. J. G. 

Holland on 
" Rum and 
Railroads." 



The lead 
taken by 
Engineer 
George 
Stephenson. 



Action by 
the West 
Lancashire 
Railway 
Company 
in this direc- 
tion. 



" Answer : None. 

"Is the trade in strong drink prohibited ? 

"Answer : Sale of malt, vinous, and spirituous liquors 
forbidden. 

" Do you attribute to the absence of facilities for 
getting drink any improved state of morals, as compared 
with other cities in your state ? 

"Answer: We certainly do, as one important aid in 
this direction." 

§ 98. Great good could be accomplished if the wealthy 
railway companies of Great Britain would exclude liquors 
from their refreshment-rooms, and furnish thirsty travellers 
with plenty of fresh pure water and the various non- 
intoxicating drinks. 

In his paper on Rutji and Railroads (Scribners Monthly, 
May, 1872), Dr. J. G. Holland says — " There is an influence 
proceeding from the highest managing man in a railroad 
corporation, which reaches further for good or evil than 
that of almost any other man in any community. If the 
president or superintendent of a railroad is a man of free 
and easy habits, if he is in the habit of taking his stimu- 
lating glass, his railroad becomes a canal through which 
a stream of liquor flows from end to end. A drinking 
head man on any railroad, reproduces himself at every 
post on bis line, as a rule. A thorough temperance man 
at the head of a corporation is a great purifier, and his 
road becomes the distributer of pure influences." 

The famous engineer, George Stephenson, manager of 
the DarHngtoD and Stockton Railway Company — the 
oldest in the world — allowed no liquors to be sold at the 
stations of his line, and, after twenty-five years' connection 
with the company, declared that he was satisfied " that if 
all railway companies were to do away with the sale of 
drink at their stations, they would be best consulting the 
interests of the shareholders and the welfare of the 
travelling public." 

Since his day, until recently, temperance reform has 
made but slow progress among railway men, but of late 
years it is advancing both here and in other countries. In 
the winter of 1883 an encouraging example in this direc- 
tion was set by the West Lancashire Railway Company, 
whose general manager, Mr. T. Gilbert, wrote to the 
British Women s Temperance Association : — 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 44^5 

" I have the pleasure to inform you that this company 
has no refreshment-rooms at any of its stations where 
intoxicating hquors are sold. It may be also interesting to 
yon to know that the whole of the company's ofi&cials are 
total abstainers, and that no man receives an appointment 
under the company unless he has previously been an 
abstainer of some standing." 

At the Annual Meeting of the Midland Railway Growing 
Temperance Society, held at the Derby Station in February, theTotir^ 
1884, the chairman, Mr. John Noble, g^ave a most en- abstinence 

. 1 p n • pjiiii movement 

couragmg account ot the growing success oi the total on the 
abstinence movement, not only all along the Midland line, ^^'jJJ^tjje"^"' 
but the Railway Union at large, and stated that public Railway 
sentiment along these great lines was daily becoming more we^ ^* 
favourable to this reform. 

A correspondent of On the Line states that the Great Oa,tmeai 
Eastern R:ailway supplies the " men at the London depots piled by^he 
with oatmeal drink, in large cans with a tap to them, ^reat East- 
with drinking-cup attached, available to the men as they company 
are at work, and that it is greatly appreciated by them." g^^^f g-^ 

In its annual report, May, 1884, the Church of England 
Temperance Society states that " at least 10,000 out of 
350,000 railway men work in the cause of temperance." 

In a paper on Drinking and Positions of Trust, the The Toronto 
Toronto Globe (Canada, February 6, 1884) says— Sa?yM?84) 

"The authorities of the Winconsin Central Railway p^^ " D^i'^^- 
issued in October last an order requiring the instant dis- of'Positions 
missal of any employe who might drink even beer whether Trust." 
off or on duty. There was a good deal of opposition to 
the order at first, as if it infringed upon private rights, 
etc., but it has wrought so well that we are told several 
other large railway corporations are thinking of following 
the same course. This is in the right direction. The 
travelling public have a right to the greatest possible pro- 
tection, when on their necessary journeyings, and they will 
be pleased to know that none who are in charge of trains 
have even the chance of becoming drunkards. A man 
does not need to be drunk in order to work irreparable 
mischief. An extra glass, by giving him a certain amount 
of unsteadiness of hand or brain, may do all ; and these 
railway authorities in Wisconsin do well to say to all who 
seek employment from them, ' You can't drink and work 



446 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. W. J. 
Spicer's 
circular to 
the Grand 
Trunk 
Railway. 



for us. We don't ask you to give over drinking. That's 
yoor look-out, and you have a right to do as you please. 
But if you will drink you are not for us. We require men 
who have all their wits about them, and that any one who 
drinks never has.' What is wrong in that ? We can see 
nothing. More than this, we can see nothing but what is 
reasonable in employers of labour all round adopting the 
same principle. It is not the man who is actually drunk 
that causes the mischief by breaking machinery, com- 
promising his employers, and causing confusion all round. 
It is the man who thinks himself perfectly sober — the man 
who has only taken 'a couple of glasses of beer,' or a 
single 'horn ' of ' summat,' but who by these means has 
had his pulse raised a few degrees, has been made 
aggressive, daring, slightly reckless, yet sufficiently so to 
make all the mischief. It is the man who thinks that 
drink ' could not be known on him,' but whose tongue has 
been slightly loosed, and who has been led to believe that 
usually he had been but a slow-coach, and must show some 
more ' go.' This is the sort of man that a shrewd employer 
ODght to fight shy of. . . . The clear brain and the steady 
nerve are more and more in requisition, and these are not 
compatible with even moderate tippling and occasional 
'bursts.'" 

And the Temperance Record (February 28, 1884) quotes 
the following circular to the Grrand Trunk Railway, issued 
by its superintendent, Mr. W. J. Spicer : — 

" I would ask you to consider very seriously the 
advisability of joining our temperance movement for the 
year 1884. In my circular, December, 1880, I said ' there 
were a good many reasons specially applicable to railway 
employes for abstaining from the use of intoxicating 
drinks.' 

" You have the lives of the public and the safety of 
persons and property entrusted to your care, requiring at 
all times the utmost possible caution and vigilance in the 
performance of your duty. Again, railway employes, from 
their liability to night work, irregular hours, exposure to 
all kinds of weather, and from the foolish and expensive 
custom of 'treating,' are exposed to much danger and 
many temptations. Even passengers have gone so far as 
to offer, and in fact urge, conductors and brakesmen, when 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 447 

on duty, to take drink, and have been the cause of train- 
men's dismissal from the service. I am sorry to say that 
I have had to deal summarily with such cases as have 
come to my knowledge. I only wish I could deal as 
severely with the perhaps good-natured but most thought- 
less and inconsiderate passengers. 

"Men subjected to such temptations, at any time, are 
safe only as total abstainers. The ' one glass more ' often 
has the effect of making a man careless, sleepy, and in- 
different to danger, if not worse, at a time when he most 
needs to have all his senses clear and wide awake for his 
own and other's safety. 

" I have only to refer you to the Offence Circulars to 
satisfy you that I am speaking in the best interest of 
every employe of every grade, and in the interest of the 
company and the public, in urging you to become total 
abstainers for the year 1884." 

The discontinuance of the custom of distributing drink 
to crews now so largely the rule both on the inland lakes 
of the United States, on river crafts, ocean steamers, sail- 
ing vessels, and men-of-war, originated with Mr. Charles 
Howard, one of the pioneer shipping merchants of the 
United States. His son, the distinguished American 
author and playwright, Mr. Bronson Howard, tells the 
story so well that I prefer giving it in his own words from 
a letter written to me March 31, 1884, as follows : — 

" My father was personally associated with the shipping Mr.Bronsoa 
of the lakes from his earliest manhood, being half owner ^count'of 
and master of a vessel, the New York, before he was twenty- the origin of 
five years old ; and he was said to have been the original reform o'n^ 
of Fennimore Cooper's young sailor Jasper m. the Pathfinder, theiakesand 
In 1830, when he was about twenty-six years old, and 
while he was master or ' captain ' of this vessel — one of a 
large fleet in Lakes Erie and Ontario — the incident of 
which I spoke to you occurred, and which was, I think, the 
beginning of the temperance system now almost universal 
in the mercantile marine of the ocean and the lakes. 

" In those days of general ' hard drinking ' it was the 
custom on our lakes to have a keg of whisky in the com- 
panion-way of every vessel, with its tap free to every 
member of the crew. Any deviation from this rule would 
have been considered mean and niggardly. The rule on 



448 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

tlie ocean was, I believe, to serve out ' grog ' to the men, 
but this was done in such, liberal quantities as to make the 
custom differ but little from that in vogue on the American 
lakes. No owner or captain was free from the absolute, 
tyranny of this custom-law, 

" During one of my father's voyages, late in December, 
1830, the crew suffered frightfully from a violent storm, 
with snow, sleet, and ice. All their physical energies 
were needed to control the vessel. What makes such a 
situation doubly fatiguing and perilous is the fact that it 
is impossible to run before the storm as on the ocean, and 
the men are obliged to handle the sails and rigging at 
frequent intervals, though every rope and every inch of 
canvas is coated with ice. About one half of my father's 
crew drank nothing in the way of spirits while at work ; 
the other half drew liberally on the keg to 'keep them 
warm.' If ever whisky could do this service for mankind, 
it could do it under such circumstances. The result was 
that my father was obliged to depend entirely on the half 
of his crew that did not drink, for nearly thirty-six hours. 
At last they were forced to do the duty of both watches ; 
and as the second in command, the ' mate,' was one of the 
alcoholists, my father was compelled to remain in active 
command during the whole time without rest, until the 
vessel was safe. He has frequently told me with special 
emphasis that the men who drank did not make themselves 
drunk, and were not in that sense incapacitated on deck, 
while the other men were able to do double work. 

" This was only the last of many similar experiences, 
which had been almost as bad, and after the storm had 
subsided, my father, in a spirit of utter disgust, turned 
open the tap of the whisky keg, on his way down to the 
cabin, leaving the sacred fluid to its own unfettered fancy ! 
' Soon after the mate appeared, and father saw him looking 
at the open faucet and shaking the empty keg with an 
expression of wonderment and dismay. When my father 
told him that the last drop of spirits had been drunk on 
board that vessel in the way of ' grog,' the mate exclaimed 
in astonishment and said thafc no owner nor captain could 
carry out such a wild plan. He and his fellow- drinkers 
left the crew at the end of the trip. Others, willing to go 
without ' grog,' were engaged in their places. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 449 

" To meet tlie certain cliarge of niggardliness, the 
ordinary rough sailors' fare was changed to the best food 
the market of each port could supply, including the finest 
coffee and other luxuries, such as oysters, etc, when within 
reach, 

" My father persisted in the plan he had thus marked 
out, and the result was a very important one, far beyond 
his anticipation, for an all-powerful commercial ally 
suddenly ranged itself on the side of temperance — the 
marine insurance companies began at once to allow dis- 
criminating rates on his vessel and on goods carried in it. 
All the other shipowners and masters on the lake were 
compelled to adopt the temperance rule, by the exigencies 
of business competition. From the lakes the custom 
spread — undoubtedly through the powerful pressure of the 
insurance companies — to the ocean ; and at the present 
day the custom of supplying liquor freely to sailors is a 
very rare exception, if it exists at all. Its latest strong- 
hold was the navy, which the interests of insurance com- 
panies cannot reach, of course. 

" The great reform resulting from my father's action, 
though not anticipated, was a matter of sincere pleasure 
to him in after years, as he watched its general develop- 
ment." 

A most valuable suggestion to wealthy merchants was Suggestion 
made about four years ago by the Honourable Samuel Son^sfmuei 
Morley, M,P. " The City of London Total Abstainers Moriey.M.p., 
Union had its origin in my warehouse," said he, " and I Abstainers 
cannot hut think some such association should be attached to V^io" , 

,7 , J should be 

every commercial concern. attached to 

§ 99. The aristocracy, as a class, have been tardy in ^eJciaTcSn- 
adding the weight of their example and influence to the cem. 
success of the temperance movement. But on the 21st of Action in 
April, 1883, a large number of the wealth and aristocracy BiuTiiibbon 
of London, both ladies and gentlemen, met at Stafford movement 
House, in response to an invitation from the Duchess of temperance 
Sutherland, to join in the Blue Ribbon movement, for the jji^j^g'^^^ 
promotion of the cause of temperance. aristocracy 

Lord Mount Temple presided, and said— of England. 

" The object of the meeting was to bring under their 
notice the overwhelming evils to the country resulting 
from the misuse of intoxicating and stimulating drinks. 

2 G 



450 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

That abuse filled our gaols, poor-law unions, and lunatic 
asylums ; brought misery, strife, and ruin to many of the 
homes of the working classes ; and overshadowed with 
sorrow and sympathy even those who were free from any 
personal experience of its evils, and who lived in comfort 
and refinement in such houses as that in which they were 
gathered. Another point to consider was the remedy for 
this deplorable state of things. The remedy which had 
been found by experience to be the most complete and 
satisfactory was for persons to pledge themselves to resist 
temptation. But that was beyond the reach of many. 
There had now been established a new form of fellowship, 
conviviality, and brotherhood, and that was the fellowship 
of the Blue Ribbon. The Blue Ribbon established a public 
opinion adverse to the drink infl.uence.* It had created a 
large amount of public opinion in favour of total abstinence. 
It brought together the middle, lower, and upper classes, 
and established a common feeling. The question then 
arose. What was their duty to help on the new movement ? 
Their example would be felt much more than any amount 
of precept. He earnestly appealed to the aristocracy to 
join the new movement, as a means of conferring great 
and lasting benefits upon the poorer classes. It would 
necessitate some self-sacrifice, and perhaps call down upon 
them sneers and censure, but it was their duty ; and 
not only that, but, as in his own case, they would find 
many compensations for the sacrifice. The noble lady, 
too, who had invited them had exercised disinterested- 
ness, almost chivalrous courage, in adopting the blue 
ribbon, an example which he trusted would be widely fol- 
lowed, for it would help to carry light and joy into many 
a home." 

During the year 1883, several of the nobility have 
identified themselves in a practical way with the temper- 
ance cause. Thus, according to the annual report of the 

* " Tlie Eev. S. Sturges, M.A., Yicar of Wargrave, in his stirring 
speecli in Willis's Kooms, remarked, ' What a glorious thing it would 
be if the Princess of Wales and her daughters would assume the blue 
ribbon ! The Princess of Wales has endeared herself to the people of 
this country by her many admirable qualities. Eecently she has 
discountenanced the cruel sport of pigeon-shooting. But what is 
that compared to the cruel sport of drinking ? ' " — Church of England 
Tenvperance Chronicle, May 12, 1883. 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 451 

Church of England Temperance Society, just published, 
" durino- the year coffee-taverns have been opened in 
Marylebone, at the sole cost of Viscountess Ossington ; in 
Wells, chiefly owing to the activity of the Lord Bishop of 
the Diocese ; and only in January last Lord Pembroke 
announced his intention of providing similar institutions 
upon his own estates. ... In May last, Lady de Rothschild 
invited the leading agriculturists, farmers, and others to a 
conference at Aston Clinton, when 62 out of 66 farmers 
invited attended. A resolution approving the payment 
of wages in money instead of beer was unanimously 
passed." 

At the laying of the corner-stone of the new wiDg of 
the London Temperance Hospital on the 24th of April, 1884, 
the Duke of Westminster, who officiated, said of alcohol 
that it had a tendency to produce artificial craving, and 
that many ignorant people had been led to suppose, because 
doctors prescribed wine and spirits, they must be a 
necessary means of cure for most maladies, and this mis- 
taken notion had laid the groundwork for habits of 
dangerous self-indulgence which might otherwise never 
have been formed. The Duke of Westminster informs 
me that since 1877 there have been " twenty-seven public- 
houses abolished on his London property." 

It is of great importance that temperance workers Thesignifi- 
should know and value the blue ribbon. It has a deep Kiue^Ribbon 
symbolic meaning, and in a manifold sense : sympathy movement, 
with the fallen, sorrow that such a badge is necessary; 
hope, because of faith in God and man ; and help, by fellow- 
ship and willingness, to do each his part in saving from 
the evil of drink. The blue ribbon is a personal protest 
against drinking, a Christian Garthaginem proeterea 
censeo against the public-house, a reminder and check 
against personal temptation to drink, a protection against 
solicitations to drink, an example and encouragement to 
those who might falter and fall, and a bond of fellowship 
between all those who wish to see man lifted out of the 
degradation into which alcohol has plunged him. The 
bit of blue ribbozi which Mr. Samuel Morley, M.P., wears 
in the House of Commons and in the streets of the city, or 
when presiding over large temperance and other meetings 
for reform, is greater in its silent influence than anything 



452 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



Mr. Glad- 
stone's 
utterance 
as to the 
significance 
of the Blue 
Ribbon 
movement. 



The plan and 
organization 
of the Tem- 
perance 
Federation 
of Great 
Britain, 1883. 



he could say if that little sign were missing. Many think 
that the wearing of the blue ribbon is a childish sign of 
an enthusiasm that will vanish as quickly as it sprung up. 
But they who wear it hope and pray that, like that tiny 
portent in the sky, "no bigger than a man's hand,'' it will 
spread and spread until among all peoples in all lands 
the parching thirst, the destroying drought of alcohol, 
may be quenched in healing streams of pure invigorating 
water. 

The Rev. A. C. Bevington, minister of the Methodist 
New Connexion Chapel at Hawarden, writing to the editor 
of the British Temperance Advocate, says that the E,ight 
Honourable W. E. Grladstone, in a recent conversation with 
him at Hawarden. thus expressed himself relative to the 
Blue Ribbon movement : — 

" From the- first, I have watched the temperance 
question with great interest ; but I am bound to say that 
no phase of it has ever yielded me so much satisfaction 
as this has done. To witness the large number of ministers 
of all denominations, and, of course, the still larger number 
of members of perhaps all the Churches, wearing the 
ribbon of blue, is an exceedingly gratifying circumstance, 
and speaks well for the f ature ; * indeed, I firmly believe, 
as far as this matter is concerned, that much brighter days 
will soon, in God's good providence, dawn upon us." 

§ 100. The initiative in a measure of very great import- 
ance — if harmony can be maintained — to the temperance 
movement has just been taken in the proposition of Alder- 
man Clegg of Sheffield (chairman of the British Temperance 
League), that all the temperance organizations of Great 
Britain and Ireland should form a Temperance Federa- 
tion. To this end a meeting was held at Manchester, on 
the 17th of October, at which some seventeen temperance 
societies were represented. After long discussion, it was 
resolved — 

" That in the opinion of this meeting it is desirable to 
federate the various temperance organizations of the United 
Kingdom in favour of measures upon which there is a 
general agreement, and that a committee of delegates be 

* It is an enconraging fact that so important a personage as Sir 
W. P. Stawell, the Chief Justice of Victoria, has donned the blue 
ribbon. (See Temvperance Record, May 8, 1884.) 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 453 

appointed by tMs meeting to confer with tlie British 
Temperance League, and to draw the basis upon which 
such federation should be founded." 

On the 8th of November, another large conference of 
delegates from the United Kingdom Temperance organiza- 
tions was convened at Exeter Hal], representing some two 
million total abstainers, for the purpose of drawing up a 
constitution of federation. The following rules were 
adopted : — 

'' 1. That the Federation be styled ' The National Temperance 
Federation.' 

2. That the objects of the Federation shall be the promotion of 
temperance, both by m.oral suasion and legal enactment, by aid of 
the joint action of temperance organizations. 

3. That the Federation shall consist of temperance leagues, unions, 
associations, and orders, and such other representative organizations 
as may be approved by the Executive Committee. 

4. That the General Council shall consist of not more than five 
delegates from each federated society, and shall meet annually in 
London in January or February ; and an autumnal meeting shall be 
held in some provincial town. 

5. The officers shall be elected by the General Council at the 
annual meeting, and shall consist of a president (who shall be 
elected annually), vice-presidents, treasurer, and secretaries. 

6. The Executive Committee shall consist of one representative 
president from each federated society, together with the treasurer 
and secretaries ; and shall meet not less than once a quarter, at such 
time and place as they shall from time to time determine. 

7. That the Executive Committee shall appoint a Parliamentary 
Committee, which, during the sitting of Parliament, shall meet once 
a week, or as often as may be necessary. 

8. That no expenses shall be incurred without the consent of the 
Executive Committee, and such expenses shall be met by contribu- 
tions from the federated societies. 

9. That no alteration in the above rules (when once adopted by 
the General Council) shall be made except at the annual meeting, 
or at a meeting specially called; and that one month's notice of any 
proposed alteration shall be given through the secretary, and shall 
not take effect except there be a two-thirds majority in its favour. 

Suggested Basis. 

The basis of co-operation for the federated societies is 
that they should work together in view of legislative and 
other action on the points upon which they are agreed, 
and bring their influence to bear on Parliament, and with 



454 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

her Majesty's Government, and throingli tlie country 
generally, as a united body ; such common action to 
extend, of course, only so far as there is common agree- 
ment, and to be made subservient to the carrying of 
measures of positive advance, as well as to the careful 
guarding against any proposals of a retrograde nature. 

Suggested Points on which Common Action Might be taken. 

1. The Federation luight at once, by a united memorial, signed 
by the officers of each organization, urge on the Cabinet the duty 
of extending and making perpetual the Irish Sunday Closing Act, 
and of acceding to the nation's manifest desire for an English 
Sunday Closing Bill ; and also the duty of their seeing that time is 
made available during the coming session for such legislation ; and 
at the proper time the Federation might be strongly represented in 
the loblDy of the House of Commons, in order to ensure the success of 
these measures. 

2. The federated organizations might urge upon her Majesty's 
Government the further duty of fulfilling the pledges so often given 
by them, to deal with the Licensing Laws in general, and to no longer 
postpone action in this regard; viewing the now thrice-expressed 
opinion of the House of Commons in favour of an efficient measure 
of Local Option. They might urge especially two points : — 

(a) That the control of the issue of licences, whether for the first 

time, or by way of renewal, transfer, or removal, should 
be in the hands of the ratepayers, and that in present cir- 
cumstances this may be done by the formation of Licens- 
ing Control Boards, specially elected for the purpose by 
the ratepayers, and with full power to withhold all or any 
of the Licences ; but that in any well-defined area forming 
part of a district for which a board has been elected, the 
ratepayers shall have a direct veto for the withholding of 
all licences. 

(b) That by no parliamentary enactment should there be a 

creating of vested interests in licences, which interests 
legal decisions have emphatically declared do not exist. 
With reference to this question also a joint memorial to the 

Cabinet might be of value at this time, as well as the careful watch. 

ing of any Government, or other measure proposed, and prompt 

action either in support of*, or opposition, to, or for amendment of, 

the same. 

3. An emphatic joint expression of opinion in favour of the sup- 
pression of grocers' and off licences might likewise be at once for- 
warded to the Government ; as well as against the power of granting 
occasional licences, or extension of hours, and in favour of closing 
public-houses on the days of municipal and parliamentary elections. 

It was also resolved- — 1. That the Federation does not 



WHAT CAN BE DONE ? 455 

approve of, but will oppose to tte full extent of its influ- 
ence, the placing of tlie power of granting licences in the 
hands of Town Councils or County Boards. 2. That each 
organization represented be invited to contribute not less 
than £5 each, to meet the incidental expenses of the 
Federation during the first year." 

On the 6th of February, 1884, a meeting was held at 
Exeter Hall by delegates of this proposed federation, and 
it was resolved to form a National Temperance Federation 
on the following basis : — 

" The basis of co-operation for the federated societies is 
that they should work together in view of legislative and 
other action on the points upon which they are agreed, 
and bring their influence to bear on Parliament and with 
her Majesty's Government, and through the country gene- 
rally, as a united body ; such common action to extend, of 
course, only so far as there is common agreement, and to 
be made subservient to the carrying of measui^es of positive 
advance, as well as to the careful guarding against any 
proposals of a retrograde nature." — Mr. W. T. Caine, M.P., 
was elected president, and vice-presidents and other officers 
were appointed. 



§ 101. Yet all these noble and heroic efforts will Thefounda- 
collapse, as in the past, if they be not founded in individual Jemperance 
character and worth. refcrm in 

On the individual, be he rich or poor, eminent or character" 
obscure ; on his patience, unselfishness, wisdom, constancy, ^^'^ worth. 
and humility, all reform, all regeneration, comes at last to 
depend ; without these. Church, State, and society, together 
with their loftiest schemes, fall little by little into moral 
decay. 

The first thing is, for each man, woman, and child of 
us, yes, each one, the greatest and the least, to start with 
the conviction and understanding that temperance is not 
limited to abstinence from alcoholic liquors, but that it 
means, as Cicero expressed it, " the unyielding control of 
reason over lust and over all wrong tendencies of mind 
. . . modesty and self-government . . . abstinence from 
all things not good and entirely innocent in their character.'''' 

And to remember that while the work to be done is so 



456 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



The hope of 
temperance 
reform — like 
the hope of 
all other 
reforms — 
is vested 
in love, 
labour, and 
humility. 



great that no one person could ever hope to do it, a.nd the 
evil to be uprooted so strong and full-grown that we may 
not reasonably look for its subjugation in our own day, yet 
that the work will be done, the evil overcome, if each one 
does his part towards it.* 

" The one secret of life and development is not to devise 
and plan, but to fall in with the forces at work — to do 
every moment's duty aright." f 

Then, in whatsoever place, circumstance, or condition 
we are placed, we are to find out, each of us, what our own 
personal individual duty is, and we shall be sure to find 
this out if we care supremely to know. 

With the performance of duty will come wisdom, show- 
ing us how to avoid giving offence, how to undermine 
and subdue evil without wounding friend or affronting 
opponent. With wisdom also will come patience, because 
we shall learn to understand that what is gained easily, 
too often passes quickly because it is not gained thoroughly, 
and we shall learn not to be dismayed by much labour, 
and much waiting, because we shall, by our persistence 
and constancy, have learned unselfishness, and know that 
what we are sowing shall be reaped by them that come 



* A noble instance of just this individual fidelity, as related of 
the late Mr. Joseph Sturge by the philanthropist Mr. T. B. Smithies, 
is thus reported in The Christian (March 6, 1883) — 

" One day Mr. Sturge met a drunken man, and questioned him as 
to his condition. The man replied that he had got drunk at such 
and such a public-house, and added, ' The bieer was made from your 
barley.' The statement startled him, but it at once influenced his 
action. The following issue of the Marie Lane Express contained a 
notice from Messrs. Sturge that under no circumstances would they 
in future supply barley for malting purposes. This decision struck 
off £8000 a year from their income." 

An equally admirable individual effort for temperance was that 
made by the E.ev. Carr Glynn, Yi car of Kensington, when appointed 
at Doncaster. Having observed the temptation the public-house 
offered to early outdoor labourers, he procured a cart, supplied it 
with a first-class coffee-stand ; went himself with it to places where 
early outdoor labour was going on, and induced the workmen to take 
his coffee instead of going to the public-house to get whisky or beer. 
I have this incident on the authority of Mr. Heaton, Commissioner of 
Lunacy. 

t See George MacDonald's noble story of Sir Gihlie (Londonj 
1879). 



WHAT CAN BE DONE? 457 

after us, when " bells in unbuilded spires, and voices of 
unborn choirs " shall bless our names and the good work 
we have done ; and we shall be happy in knowing that 
the saplings we set out, though they grew too slowly to 
give shade to us, will make the green and healthy ever- 
lasting bowers where our children's children's homes 
shall be. 



APPENDIX. 



THIETY-SEVENTH EEPOET OF 



TABLE XXII.— Showing the Assigned Causes of Insanity* 
Borough Asylums, Eegistered Hospitals, Naval and Military 
Wales, during the year 1882. 

total number of these admissions during 1882 was 



[The 









Number of instances 


Causes of insanity. 


As predisposing 
cause. f 


As exciting 
cause.f 






M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 




Moral. 
















Domestic trouble (including loss of 
















relatives and friends) 


42 


18 


120 


174 


554 


728 




Adverse circumstances (including 
















business anxieties and pecuni- 
















ary difficulties) 


88 


43 


131 


431 


207 


638 




Mental anxiety and "worry" (not 
















included under the above two 
















heads); and overwork 


49 


31 


80 


263 


289 


552 




Keligious excitement 


6 


14 


20 


155 


188 


343 




Love affairs (including seduction) ... 


4 


15 


19 


39 


129 


168 




Fright and nervous shock 


5 


5 


10 


36 


96 


132 




Physical. 
















Intemperance, in drink 


135 


33 


168 


904 


364 


1,268 




„ sexual 


13 


7 


20 


54 


32 


86 




Venereal disease 


14 


2 


16 


14 


7 


21 




Self-abuse (sexual) 


16 


2 


18 


79 


5 


84 




Over-exertion 


11 


5 


16 


27 


29 


56 




Sunstroke 


64 


2 


66 


67 


7 


74 




Accident or injury 


104 


20 


124 


160 


35 


195 




Pregnancy 


— 


11 


11 


— 


37 


37 




Parturition and the puerperal state 


— 


31 


31 


— 


346 


346 




Lactation 





24 


24 





123 


123 




Uterine and ovarian disorders 





21 


21 


— 


95 


95 




Puberty 


3 


IS 


21 


3 


30 


33 




Change of life 


— 


88 


88 


— 


138 


138 




Fevers 


9 


10 


19 


26 


20 


46 




Privation and starvation 


9 


35 


44 


55 


114 


169 




Old age 


98 


114 


212 


65 


78 


143 




■Other bodily diseases or disorders ... 


142 


139 


281 


352 


416 


768 




Previous attacks 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 




Hereditary influence ascertained ... 






















Congenital defect ascertained 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 


— 




Other ascertained causes 


27 


25 


52 


127 


32 


159 




Unknown 


— 


~~ 


— 


— 


— 


— 





* These " causes " are not taken from the " statements " in the papers of admission 
the asylums. 

f With reference to the above distinction between "predisposing" and "exciting" 
any individual case. 

J These totals represent the entire number of instances in which the several causes 
mental disorder. The aggregate of these totals (including " unknown "), of course, 



THE COMMISSIONEES IN LUNACY. 

in the cases of all patients admitted into cotjnty and 
Hospitals, State Asylums, and Licensed Houses in England and 



13,581, being 6,663 of the male, and 6,918 of the female sex.] 



in which each cause was assigned. 
















Proportion (per cent.) to 












the total number of 




As predisposing or 
exciting cause (where 




Total.J 




patients admitted during 




these could not be 






the year. 




distinguished.) t 










M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 




65 


82 


148 


282 


714 


996 


4-2 


10-3 


7-3 




96 


32 


128 


615 


282 


897 


9-2 


4-0 


6-5 




84 


54 


138 


396 


374 


770 


5-9 


5-4 


5-6 




35 


33 


68 


196 


235 


431 


2-9 


34 


3-1 




6 


27 


33 


49 


171 


220 


•7 


2-4 


1-6 




18 


21 


39 


59 


122 


181 


•9 


1-7 


1-3 




269 


74 


343 


1,308 


471 


1,779 


19-6 


6-8 


13-1 




18 


9 


27 


85 


48 


133 


1-2 


•7 


1-0 




10 


5 


15 


38 


14 


52 


•6 


•2 


•4 




25 


1 


26 


120 


8 


128 


1-8 


•1 


•9 




8 


1 


9 


46 


35 


81 


•7 


•5 


•6 




28 


1 


29 


159 


10 


169 


2-4 


•1 


1-2 




101 


13 


114 


365 


68 


433 


5-5 


1-0 


3-2 






7 


7 


— 


55 


55 


— 


•8 


•4 







79 


79 





456 


456 





6-6 


3-3 







10 


10 


— 


157 


" 157 


— 


2-3 


1-1 







16 


16 





132 


132 





1-9 


1-0 




9 


8 


17 


15 


56 


71 


•2 


•8 


•5 







48 


48 





274 


274 





39 


2-0 




7 


8 


15 


42 


38 


80 


•6 


•5 


•6 




26 


27 


53 


90 


176 


266 


1-3 


2-5 


1-9 




86 


108 


194 


249 


300 


549 


3-7 


4-3 


4-0 




255 


208 


463 


749 


763 


1,512 


11-2 


11-0 


11-1 




— 


— 


- 


878 


1,273 


2,151 


13-2 


18-4 


15-8 













1,239 


1,506 


2,745 


18-6 


21-8 


20-2 




— 


— 


— 


363 


229 


592 


5-4 


3-3 


4-3 




50 


34 


84 


204 


91 


295 


3-0 


1-3 


2-1 






— 


— 


1,417 


1,441 


2,858 


21-3 


20-8 


21-0 



of the patients, but are those which have been verified by the Medical Officers of 

causes, it must be understood that no single cause is enumerated more than once in 

(either alone or in combination with other causes) were stated to have produced the 
exceeds the whole number of patients admitted ; the excess is owing to the combinations. 



462 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



TABLE XXIII, — Showing the Assigned Causes op Insanity in 
Eegisteked Hospitals, Naval and Military Hospitals, State 

THE YEAE 1882, ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE ClASS OF THBJ 





Number of instances in which 






Private. 






Causes of insanity. 


The total number admitted 








was 2,212. 








(1,134: males and 1,078 females.) 






M. 


F. 


T. 




Moral. 










Domestic trouble (including loss of relatives and 










friends) 


57 


123 


180 




Adverse circumstances (including business anxieties 










and pecuniary difficulties) 


123 


40 


163 




Mental anxiety and "worry" (not included under 










the above two heads); and overwork 


152 


94 


246 




Religious excitement 


19 


53 


72 




Love affairs (including seduction) 


13 


43 


56 




Fright and nervous shock 


7 


30 


37 




Physical. 










Intemperance, in drink 


198 


73 


271 




„ sexual .., 


27 


2 


29 




Venereal disease 


15 


1 


16 




Self-abuse (sexual) 


29 


4 


33 




Over-exertion 


11 


4 


15 




Sunstroke 


29 


1 


30 




Accident or injury 


, 40 


13 


53 




Pregnancy 





9 


9 




Parturition and the puerperal state 


— 


66 


66 




Lactation 





11 


11 




Uterine and ovarian disorders 


— 


49 


49 




Puberty 


3 


8 


11 




Change of life 


— 


58 


58 




Fevers 


17 


10 


27 




Privation and starvation 


I 


— 


1 




Old age 


31 


35 


66 




Other bodily diseases or disorders 


102 


105 


207 




Previous attacks 


146 


194 


340 




Hereditary influence ascertained 


214 


236 


450 




Congenital defect ascertained 


77 


53 


130 




Other ascertained causes 


97 


22 


119 




Unknown 


170 


157 


327 





APPENDIX. 



463 



THE Patients admitted into County and Boeough Asylums, 
Asylums, and Licensed Houses in England and Wales, duking 
Patients. 



each cause was assigned. 


Proportion (per cent.) to the total number of 


patients in each class admitted during 1882. 




Pauper. 








The total number admitted 
was 11,369. 


Private. 


Pauper. 




(5,529 males and 6,840 








females.) 








M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 




225 


591 


816 


5-0 


11-4 


8-1 


4-0 


10-1 


7-1 




492 


242 


734 


10-8 


3-7 


7-3 


8-9 


4-1 


6-4 




244 


280 


524 


13-4 


8-7 


11-1 


4-4 


4-8 


4-6 




177 


182 


359 


1-6 


4-9 


3-2 


3-2 


31 


31 




36 


128 


164 


1-1 


3-9 


2-5 


•6 


2-2 


1-4 




52 


92 


144 


•6 


2-8 


1-6 


•9 


1-6 


1-2 




1,110 


398 


1,508 


17-4 


6-7 


12-2 


20-0 


6-8 


13-2 




58 


46 


104 


2 


4 


•2 


1-3 


1-0 


•8 


•9 




23 


13 


36 


1 


3 


•1 


•7 


•4 


•2 


•3 




91 


4 


95 


2 


5 


•3 


1-5 


1-6 





•8 




35 


31 


66 




9 


•3 


•7 


•6 


•5 


•6 




130 


9 


139 


2 


5 


•1 


1-3 


2-3 


•1 


1-2 




325 


55 


380 


3 


5 


1-2 


2-4 


5-8 


•9 


3-3 




— 


46 


46 





•8 


•4 





•8 


•4 




■ — 


390 


390 


— 


6-1 


2-9 


— 


6-6 


3-4 




— 


146 


146 





1-0 


•5 





2-5 


1-3 




_ 


83 


83 


_ 


4-5 


2-2 


— 


1-4 


•7 




12 


48 


60 


■2 


•7 


•5 


•2 


•8 


•5 




— 


216 


216 





5-3 


2-6 


— 


3-7 


1-9 




25 


28 


53 


1-5 


•9 


1-2 


•4 


•4 


•4 




89 


176 


265 


•1 


— 


— 


1-6 


3-0 


2-3 




218 


265 


483 


2-7 


3-2 


2-9 


3-9 


4-5 


4-2 




647 


658 


1,305 


8-9 


9-7 


9-3 


11-7 


11-2 


11-4 




732 


1,079 


1,811 


12-8 


17-9 


15-3 


13-2 


18-4 


15-9 




1,025 


1,270 


2,295 


18-9 


21-8 


20-3 


18-5 


21-7 


202 




286 


176 


462 


6-8 


4-9 


5-9 


5-2 


3-0 


4-0 




107 


69 


176 


8-5 


2-0 


5-4 


1-9 


1-1 


1-5 




1,247 


1,284 


2,531 


14-9 


14-5 


14-8 


22-5 


22-0 22-2 



464 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



TABLE XXIV. — Showing the Assigned Causes of Insanity in 
THE cases of the. General Paralytics admitted into County 
AND Borough Asylums, Registered Hospitals, Naval and 
Military Hospitals, State Asylums, and Licensed Houses in 
England and Wales, during the yeak 1882.* 

[The total number of these admissions was 1,151, being 923 of the 
male, and 228 of the female sex.] 



Causes of insanity. 


Number of instances 

in which each 
cause was assigned. 


Proportion (per cent.) 

to the total number 

of general paralytics 

admitted. 




M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 


Moral. 














Domestic trouble (including loss of 














relatives and friends) 


35 


22 


57 


3-8 


9-6 


4-9 


Adverse circumstances (including 














business anxieties and pecuni- 














ary difficulties) 


126 


15 


141 


13-6 


6-5 


12-2 


Mental anxiety and "worry" (not 














included under the above two 














heads) ; and overwork 


65 


3 


68 


7-0 


1-3 


5-9 


Eeligious excitement 


10 


1 


11 


11 


•4 


•9 


Love affairs (including seduction) ... 


3 


2 


5 


•3 


•9 


•4 


Fright and nervous shock 


3 


— 


3 


•3 


— 


•2 


Physical. 














Intemperance, in drink 


234 


30 


264 


25-3 


13-1 


22-9 


„ sexual 


28 


1 


35 


30 


3-0 


3-0 


Venereal disease 


9 


4 


13 


1-0 


1-7 


1-1 


Self-abuse (sexual) 


3 




3 


•3 




•2 


Over-exertion ... 


14 





14 


1-5 





1-2 


Sunstroke 


32 


I 


33 


3-5 


•4 


2-8 


Accident or injury 


71 


3 


74 


7-7 


1-3 


6-4 


Pregnancy 




4 


4 




1-7 


•3 


Parturition and the puerperal state 


— 


13 


13 





5-7 


I-l 


Lactation 





4 


4 





1-7 


•3 


Uterine and ovarian disorders 





2 


2 





•9 


•2 


Puberty 
















Change of life ... 





6 


6 





2-6 


•5 


Fevers 


2 





2 


•2 




■2 


Privation and starvation 


18 


7 


25 


1-9 


30 


2-1 


Old age 


3 


5 


8 


•3 


2-2 


•7 


Other bodily diseases or disorders ... 


115 


35 


150 


12-4 


15-3 


130 


Previous attacks 


63 


18 


81 


6-8 


7-8 


7-0 


Hereditary influence ascertained . . . 


161 


42 


203 


17-4 


18-4 


17-6 


Congenital defect ascertained 


1 


1 


2 


•1 


•1 


•2 


Other ascertained causes 


9 


2 


11 


1-0 


•9 


•9 


Unknown 


242 


75 


317 


26-2 


32-9 


27-5 



* This table may be compared with Table XXII., which shows the Causes of In- 
sanity in the cases of all the patients admitted during 1882. 



APPENDIX. 



465 



TABLE XXV. — Showing the Assigned Causes op Insanity in the 
CASES OP the Patients with Suicidal Propensity who were 
admitted into County and Borough Asylums, Registered 
Hospitals, Naval and Military Hospitals, State Asylums, 
AND Licensed Houses in England and Wales, during the 
year 1882.* 

[The total number of these admissions was 3,877, being 1,785 of the 
male, and 2,092 of the female sex.] 









Proportion (percent.) 




Number of instances 


to the total n 


umber 


Causes of insanity. 


in 


which each 


of patients admitted 




cause was assigned. 


w 


ith suicidal 








propensity. 




M. 


F. 


T. 


M. 


F. 


T. 


Moral. 














Domestic trouble (including loss of 














relatives and friends) 


110 


269 


379 


6-1 


12-8 


9-7 


Adverse circumstances (including 














business anxieties and pecuni- 














ary difficulties) 


121 


104 


225 


6-7 


4-9 


6 


Mental anxiety and "worry" (not 














included under the above two 














heads) ; and overwork 


138 


153 


291 


7-7 


7-3 


7-5 


Religious excitement 


63 


79 


142 


3-5 


3-8 


3-6 


Love affairs (including seduction) ... 


16 


60 


76 


•9 


2-9 


1-9 


Fright and nervous shock 


17 


40 


57 


•9 


1-9 


1-4 


Physical. 














Intemperance, in drink 


340 


130 


470 


19-0 


6-2 


12-1 


„ sexual 


15 


6 


21 


•8 


•3 


•5 


Venereal disease 


9 


5 


14 


•5 


•2 


•3 


Self-abuse (sexual) 


37 


3 


40 


2-0 


•1 


10 


Over-exertion 


10 


10 


20 


•6 


•5 


•5 


Sunstroke 


26 


2 


28 


1-4 


•1 


•7 


Accident or injury 


100 


25 


125 


5-6 


1-2 


3-2 


Pregnancy 


— 


15 


15 




•7 


•4 


Parturition and the puerperal state 





147 


147 





7-0 


3-8 


Lactation 





66 


66 





31 


1-7 


Uterine and ovarian disorders 





54 


54 





2-6 


1-4 


Puberty 


7 


12 


19 


•4 


•6 


•5 


Change of life 





112 


112 





5-3 


2-9 


Fevers 


10 


7 


17 


•6 


•3 


•4 


Privation and starvation 


29 


54 


83 


1-6 


2-6 


2-1 


Old age 


61 


60 


121 


3-4 


2-9 


3-1 


Other bodily diseases or disorders ... 


210 


226 


436 


11-8 


10-8 


11-2 


Previous attacks 


248 


368 


616 


13-9 


17-6 


15-8 


Hereditary influence ascertained ... 


385 


502 


887 


21-6 


24-0 


22-8 


Congenital defect ascertained 


53 


38 


91 


2-9 


1-8 


2-3 


Other ascertained causes 


39 


22 


61 


2-2 


1-0 


1-6 


Unknown 


344 


387 


731 


19-2 


18-5 


18-8 



* This table may be compared with Table XXII., which shows the Causes of 
Insanity in the cases of all the patients admitted during 1882. 

2 H 



466 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



o 


rrT 


02 


H 
g 


P 
<1 


§ 
g 


H 


P3 


g 






P 


<) 




■< 


H 







C/J 


H 


(d 




Ci5 


H 


»:] 


te 


^ 


Q 




Eh 


ri 


O 


S 





W 


OT 





^: 





<< 


>< 

H 


>- 


Q 


JB 


« 


rn 


5^ 


<! 


!^ 


W 




^ 


Ph 


'I 




O 


a 


01 




g 


<1 






cq 


I-! 




rm 


<) 


on 


Q 










o 


J 


M 


& 


-i) 


^ 






W 


t^ 


E3 


Eh 




w 


^ 


S 


H 




<J 




H 


H 


;z; 


^ 


^f 


M 






n 


g 




f^ 


1-1 


N 


(S 


•< 


O 




^ 








y 





« 




12; 


52; 




p 


» 


g 


p 


w 


p 


r>^ 


Eh 




^ 





i/5 


H 


< 


•?, 


^ 


a 


M 

rn 





r»i 


p 


w 


p 


«J 


w 




p 









1 





w 


h-t 




p 






02 

p 



M 




h:i 


W 


P 


Q 







< 


< 






B 







Proportion (per cent.) 
of the number admitted 
with suicidal propensity 

to the total number of 

patients admitted during 

1882. 


H 


to CO la (N *- « 
P t- in i do ^^- 

(M la rH rH rH 


to 

do 


^ 


22-7 
56-7 
16-5 
13-7 

7-9 

.18-4 


1 


M 


20-4 
53-2 
14-8 
19-0 

9-2 
168 


00 


Of the total number of 

patients admitted during 

1882. 


."S a 

'H 2 


H 


1,494 

1,895 

278 

85 

59 
66 


co- 


Pm 


to 00 10 00 ,-( Td< 
CO 10 i-l CO (M N 


1 


§ 


00 *- CO !» 00 (N 

s g S ^ CO ^ 


1 


|i 

t^- a 
-^ 

II 
1! 


H 


6,900 

3,304 

1,794 

523 

680 
380 


2 


F. 

3,682 

1,866 

698 

276 

266 
130 


00 

to" 


g 


3,218 
1,438 
1,096 

247 

414 
250 


CO 

to 

to- 




1- 

3 

a 

a 




Mania 

Melancholia 

(Ordinary 

Dementia ■{ 

.Senile 

Congenital insanity (including idiocy and other 
mental defects from birth or infancy) 

Other forms of insanity 


1 



Local Option, Prohibition and Compensation. 

The Alliance News for June 28, 1879, liad tlie following 
leader on 

" The Eights of Sober Men. 

" We hear and read a good deal about the rights of drinkers. 
We are told, indeed, by the Times that no man now defends 
drunkenness. Perhaps not. Thousands, however, excuse it, and 
millions practise it. Men afSrm that they will not have Maine 
Laws, Permissive Bills, Local Option, or anything of the sort. 
They stand upon what they call their rights. Now, let it be under- 
stood that no civilized people permit any man absolute freedom of 
speech and action. We are all under law. Our freedom is not 
without bounds. There are legal and moral barriers around us. 
All true life has limitations. Unlimited liberty means fire, 
slaughter, confusion, and misery. 

" For any man, therefore, to argue about his rights, and especially 
about his right to make, sell, buy, give, and consume strong drink, 
as though he was aloae to be consulted, is the height of selfish 
folly. Is he not a member of a community ? Do not his actions 
affect others ? Does not his drink introduce an element of danger 
into society? And if this is the case, may not his right become 
obsolete ? May its exercise not become a great wrong ? This is 
what we contend. 

" Let us illustrate the position. We write this in a metropolitan 
parish of vast extent, and we have to pay its rates. Let us look at 
them. For the relief of the poor the rates amount to £51,500. 
Now, the parish swarms with public-houses, and their victims fill 
the workhouse. The more people drink, the more rates we have to 
pay. Have we, then, no rights in this matter ? If a public-house, 
through the pauperism which it produces and perpetuates, takes 
money out of our purse from year to year, are we not to have the 
power of saying whether we will have the public-house there ? Are 
the rights of the selfish drinker supreme ? And have we none ? 

"Let us look at another item. The police costs the parish 
£13,788. That is a heavy item. But what makes it so ? Un- 
doubtedly it is intemperance, and that boozing which makes men 
quarrelsome and criminal. The sober man never takes three or 
four policeman to carry him to a cell and arraign him before a 
magistrate. It is the alleged right to drink that swells the police 
rate. Must we, then, pay an army of blue-coated men to keep in 



468 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

order those curious people who seem to think that their right to 
drink must not be challenged ? Must we pay £13,788 for police, 
and see the force chiefly engaged with the victims of public-houses, 
and go on paying world without end ? Have we no rights in this 
matter? We hold that we have, and we shall take care to claim 
them to the uttermost. 

" Then there is the school board. It costs us £22,618. We do 
not object to the education of the poor man's child, but has the poor 
man a right to spend money upon beer, and then tax us to educate 
his child ? Have we no rights in that case as to his beer? Has he 
and he alone rights in reference to beer, and we none as to the tax 
which his beer imposes upon us in reference to his child ? 

" This popular belief in the drinker's rights is a mistake. A 
community has a right to suppress anything which makes men bad 
citizens, and this is the case with the traffic in strong drink. Let 
the sober men therefore look after their right in relation to it, and 
put the traffic down." 



From the Alliance News, February 9, 1884 : — 

" The Law of the Tkansfer of Licences. 

" No Landlord's Property in the Licence. 

" In the Queen's Bench Division, January 31 (Sittings in Banco 
in the Lord Chief Justice's Court, before Baron Pollock and Mr. 
Justice Lopes), an important case was tried — that of The Queen v. 
The Justices of Derby. This was a public-house licence case, which 
raised and decided the point that on an application for the transfer 
of a licence the magistrates have an absolute discretion t(.) grant it 
or refuse it, and may refuse it on the ground that in their opinion 
there is no necessity for another public-house in the parish, 
and that, even, although the house is an old one. The question 
had arisen in the present case amidst these circumstances. The 
house, which was in the Market-place, Derby, was an old one, and 
it was stated that it had been occupied for a hundred years by wine 
merchants with a full public-house licence. In 1865 it was let to 
two persons named Cox and Bowring on a fourteen years' lease ex- 
piring on I he first of July, 1879. At the annual licensing meeting 
in 1876 Cox and Bowring obtained a new licence for new [)remises 
they had built in Irongate, and this was renewed at the annual 
meeting in 1877, the justices then refusing to renew the licence to 
the Market-place premises, from which in June, 1877, Cox and 
Bowring had removed their business. They did not give up posses- 
sion to the owners until the expiration of the lease in July, 1879, 
and the premises remained unlicensed after October 15, 1877, till 
the [)resent time. Minnitt, the applicant, took the premises from 
the owners in 1879, and applied at the annual licensing meetings in 



APPENDIX. 469 

1879, 1880, 1881, and 1882, for a new licence, which was always 
refused. In consequence of the decision in The Queen v. The 
Justices of Liverpool in the Court of Appeal in July last, application 
was made at a si^ecial sessions for a transfer licence under section 14 
of the Act of 1828. This was refused, and the Quarter Sessions on 
appeal confirmed the refusal, assuming to do so as a matter of dis- 
cretion. It was admitted that the applicant was a ' fit and proper 
person,' and that there was no charge against him. 

" Mr. Etherington Smith now moved, on behalf of the owner 
and new tenant, for a mandamus to the magistrates. He urged 
that in the case of a transfer of a licence, especially in the case of an 
old house, there was a kind of ' vested interest ' in the owner, and 
that there was not such an absolute discretion to grant or refuse a 
licence as in the case of a new licence. A new licence meant, he 
submitted, a licence to a house which had not been licensed before, 
and where the new tenant was a ' fit and proper person,' and there 
was no charge against him, the licence ought to be transferred, 
otherwise an outgoing tenant, giving up possession for a year, might 
lose the licence and seriously injure his landlord's property. 

" Mr. Baron Pollock here asked on what ground did the magis- 
trates refuse the transfer of the licence ? Mr. E. Smith replied : 
•It is believed that it was because they considered there were 
public-houses enough in the parish without this ; that is, in the 
exercise of a general and absolute discretion.' 

" Mr. Justice Lopes cited a text-book, in which it was said : * In 
all cases of transfers of licences the discretion of the justices is 
absolute,' adding that he was disposed to agree in that view and 
thought it to be right. There certainly was a decision to that 
efi"ect before the Act of 1872, but that is not now in point, and 
under the law as it stands there is not an absolute discretion to refuse 
the transfer of a licence to an old house. 

" Mr. Baron Pollock said he should be sorry to lay down any 
rule which would limit the discretion of the justices further than it 
had been limited by the Legislature, but he should be still more 
sorry to give any ground for the belief that a licence in such a case 
was a kind of property in the landlord. It might be so virtually in 
some cases, and reasonably so, but that view must not be carried too 
far ; and the notion that there was a property in the landlord in the 
licence could not be considered as sound law. The only question 
was whether the magistrates had a discretion, and the case referred 
to seemed to be in point to show that they had. 

" Mr. Justice Lopes concurred, and held that in cases of transfer 
of licences the discretion of the magistrates is to be absolute. The 
application was therefore refused. 

" Commenting on the case the Manchester Examiner says : — 
* The contention was, in substance, that when " a fit and proper 
person" was proffered as a tenant of an old licensed house, the 



470 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

magistrates were bound to accept him, and had no right to consider 
whether there were enough or too many public-houses in the 
district. It was on this question that the importance of the judg- 
ment became most evident. Mr. Baron Pollock said he should be 
sorry to give any ground for the belief that a licence in such a case 
was a property in the landlord. The notion that there was a pro- 
perty of the landlord in the licence, he said, could not be considered 
as sound law. Both judges, in dismissing the appeal, affirmed the 
absolute right of the magistrates to say yea or nay to applications 
for transfers as they thought fit, and as the result of a reasonable 
consideration of the wants of the neighbourhood.' " 



From tlie Alliance Neivs, November 24, 1883 : — 

" Mr. William Fowler, M.P., and Mr. J. A. Partridg^e on the 
Liquor Question. 

" In the course of a capital lecture delivered at the Devonshire 
Eooms, Cambridge, on Wednesday week, Mr. W. Fowler, M.P., 
presiding, Mr. J. A. Partridge, of Oxford, said drunkenness hinders 
the development of the manhood of the nation and mars its pro- 
sperity. Drunkenness is the voluntary principle applied to taxation 
by sots and fools. Why should the honest working man carry 
a drink-made pauper on his back ? But he does if he pays taxes. 
* One touch of the tax-gatherer makes the whole world akin.' 
It is said, and with truth, that the people can't get on the land; 
but drunkenness keeps them off, as well as bad Land laws. 
Suppose there are eighty millions of acres in the United Kingdom 
and Ireland, and that we saved sixty millions sterling yearly 
out of a hundred and thirty millions drink bill, and that good 
land can be bought for £60 per acre. In ten years the people 
might buy up ten millions of acres, or one-eighth part of all 
our land. Of this, I understand, the thrift and energy of Cambrid<j;e 
men has shown a good example. Take another instance as to trade. 
With a hundred and thirty millions sterling you might start twenty- 
six thousand trades — business enterprises — with £5000 capital tor 
each, employing a hundred pair of hands, turning out £20,000 a 
year in goods, and paying wages £100 a week each. That would, in 
the whole country, employ 2,600,000 men, and make £52,000,000 
worth of goods. Mr. William Fowler, M.P,, said he agreed that the 
question of drunkenness wanted dealing with, and that the great 
question of the drink ought to be grappled with. How it was to be 
dealt with was a most important and very difficult question. He 
knew that some members of Parliament voted for Local Option 
who did not believe in it. He voted for it because he did believe 
in it — though not, perhaps, altogether in its application as Sir 
Wilfrid Lawson would apply it. He was for removing the 



APPENDIX. 471 

liceDsing power from the hands of the great unpaid, of whom he 
was one ; but, whether it was to be done by a special board or by 
the town councils was a question to be decided. He was not very 
much in favour of licensing systems of any kmd. From what he 
had observed in America and England, he had come to the conclu- 
sion that the system was the cause of so much trouble and misery, 
that it was almost, if not quite, impossible to mend it. There had 
been a good deal of stir lately about the condition of dwellings in 
London ; but he thought he had seen in the country cottage property 
quite as bad as any that could be found in London. He did not 
know^ any greater disgrace to the country than some of the cottage 
property. They would never mend this state of things till the mind 
of the people of England was moved on the subject. The remedy 
laid very much in the hands of the people themselves. As soon as 
they reformed their habits they would refuse to live in such 
places." 



Erom the Alliance News, July 31, 1880 : — 
"Compensation to Publicans. 

" One of the most striking features in connection with the dis- 
cussion of matters relating to temperance legislation is the prominence 
given to the question of compensation. It is rarely that any of our 
public men refer to the question without distinctly acknowledging 
the right of the publicans to compensation in the event of their 
trade being disturbed by adverse legislation. It is rather matter 
for congratulation than otherwise that this question of compensation 
is being pushed so much to the front, because when one of two 
belligerents commences negotiations as to the terms of peace, it is a 
good sign that hostilities will soon cease. Hence prohibitionists 
regard with some satisfaction this cry for compensation, taking it 
as a ' sign of the times ' that the ' beginning of the end ' of the 
struggle with the traific is already present with us. 

"It is observable, however, that we have never yet had any 
specific statement of the claim to be put forward on behalf of the 
liquor men. It is dealt with in vague generalities, such as that 
' there ought to be fair and just compensation paid to those who are 
engaged in a legal business if it is suppressed ; " but we are never 
told what would be ' fair and just compensation,' Without asking 
our opponents to give us a fully worked out plan, we do think it 
would materially assist the discussion if we had a distinct definition 
of the principles. 

"Now, in the case before us there is no property taken — not a 
single brick or stone is removed ; the barrels and bottles are left 
where they are ; the furniture, the glasses, and the drink are left in 
the man's possession. He can do what he chooses with them, they 



472 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

are his to keep or sell — except the drink, which he may not sell ; 
he is at liberty to put them to some other use, and to invest his 
capital in some other undertaking. All that the prohibitory law 
would do would be to prevent him from using his property for a 
particular purpose. Few people will care to contend that the State 
has no right to determine the uses to which a man may apply his 
property. That is a thing which the State does continually, to the 
great benefit of the people at large. Clearly, then, as no property is 

* confiscated,' but all is left with its real owners, the case does not 
belong to that class to which the rule we have just laid down can 
be applied. 

" But other ground is taken up, another position is assumed, 
which we will endeavour to state as clearly as possible. It is (1) 

* That the State having recognized the legality of the trade, by 
giving it the s^^nction and protection of the law, cannot change its 
policy in regard to it without providing against loss to those whom 
such legislation has induced to enter into the trade.' (2) That 
while licences are granted for one year only, there is a moral under- 
standing, strengthened by universal practice, that the licence shall 
be renewed if the licence-holder has not been convicted of an offence 
against the law. These two propositions contain everything of 
importance which has been urged in favour of compensation. The 
first of them seems to imply that if a trade is legal those engaged 
in it are entitled to compensation in the event of its being suppressed. 
Now, all trades are legal which the law does not prohibit. It does 
not require an Act of Parliament to say that the trade in a certain 
article is legal. The absence of legal restraint is all that is required 
in order to establish its legality. The point to be kept in mind is 
this, that special legislation does not make a trade legal, such legis- 
lation being usually undertaken for the purpose of restriction rather 
than that of giving or assuring liberty. If, for instance, slavery 
were permitted in our country, and the buying and selling of men 
and women were not prohibited by law, if there were no laws what- 
ever bearing upon such traffic, then it would be perfectly legal. 
But supposing the Government, for purposes of revenue, or the 
prevention of abuses, gave orders that no person should be allowed 
to buy and sell slaves except those who first obtained a licence 
from the State official, would the trade be any the more legal on 
that account ? Not in the least. So far as it was allowed it would 
be legal, just as it was before, but no more and no less. We claim, 
then, that so far as legality is concerned the position of the liquor 
traffic is no better when conducted under licence than if it were 
free. It may be dealt with in the same way and upon the same 
terms as any of the ordinary trades with which Government sees 
fit to interfere. This is a point of no little importance to our 
argument, for we go on to point out that the State has the right 
to restrict or suppress any trade in the interests of the public 



APPENDIX. 473 

without having regard to the effect upon the pecuniary interests 
of those concerned. Nor does the State lose any of its rights 
by continuing a certain policy for any length of time. It is 
always competent to change its policy in any direction which the 
public good demands, and at any time the public voice decides 
through its constitutional organs. It is, however, alleged further 
that this special legislation has induced men to invest their capital 
in the belief that tState policy would remain the same. In other 
words, they went in for the great gains which a valuable monopoly 
ensured, and now they are met with the great risks which always 
accompany great gains, they lay the blame upon other shoulders, 
and ask that they shall be compensated because they may not con- 
tinue to buy, sell, and get gain in that particular way. They are 
simply speculators whose calculations have turned out wrong, and 
who therefore may claim the nation's pity, but not the nation's 
money. 

" The history of liquor trafSc legislation throws a light upon 
this subject, which does not lend much colour to the publican's 
claim, but rather helps to show its hollowness. Let us look at 
some of the facts which history reveals, taking those which have 
the most direct bearing upon the subject under consideration. In 
1487 an Act was passed empowering magistrates to suppress the 
liquor traffic wherever they thought fit, thus giving the magistracy 
a prohibitory power, but no provision was made for compensating 
those who were suppressed. In 1552 all taverns were suppressed 
by Act of Parliament, with the exception of forty in London, three 
in Westminster, eight in York, six in Bristol, and in every other 
town two. The first of these Acts was a permissive prohibitory 
one, providing for prohibition by ' local option ; ' but the latter was 
almost entire prohibition by imperial enactment, and the exercise 
of the power was not trammelled by considerations as to compensa- 
tion. At a time when precedents are so much sought after and so 
highly valued (and the older they are the more valuable they seem 
to be), it may not be out of place to point to these two instances of 
legislative suppression without compensation. But to come to a 
time nearer our own, we will notice the Beer Bill of 1830. The 
Government of that day, impressed with the state of the country as 
regarded intemperance, were moved to attempt something in the 
shape of a remedy, and carried through Parliament the Beer Bill. 
The efi"ect of this measure was the establishment of a new branch 
of the liquor traffic separate and distinct from that already in 
existence. Licences were granted to all and sundry who chose to 
fulfil the conditions for the sale of beer. We need not stay here to 
consider the wisdom or folly of this measure ; we are more concerned 
with the effect which it produced upon those who had previously 
eojoyed a complete monopoly, and we are still more concerned with 
the motives by which Parliament was actuated and the object it 



474 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

had in view. Parliament thought that by the establishment of a 
set of houses for the sale and consumption of beer, people would be 
weaned from spirits, would cease to patronize the licensed victualler, 
and take their money to the beerhouse-keeper. Here, then, we 
have this fact, that Parliament passed an Act which admitted 
another class of men to a share in the liquor monopoly with the 
distinct purpose of damaging the interests of the publicans. Parlia- 
ment intended that it should be so, it hoped and expected that it 
would be so, and it did that deliberately without providing for 
compensating those who would suffer. The publicans felt that they 
were not being fairly dealt with, and influenced their friends in 
Parliament (they have never wanted friends there) to oppose the 
measure, which was done both in the Lords and Commons. The 
Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir H. Goulbourne) admitted that 
" diminution of the present value of their capital would follow the 
adoption of the Bill,' but the only alternative before him was this — ■ 
' would he lean towards the supposed interests of the smaller class 
or towards that of the community generally ? This being so, he 
could not hesitate upon the decision he was bound to take under 
such circumstances,' This was a clear and bold enunciation of the 
principle we are endeavouring to laydown, that when the pecuniary 
interests of a class come in contact with the welfare of the people 
generally they must be sacrificed. In the end the publicans had to 
submit to a new rivalry which might work upon them serious loss, 
and in fact was intended so to do. 

" A more direct interference was that of the Forbes Mackenzie 
Act for closing public-houses in Scotland during the whole of 
Sunday. This Act took away about one-twelfth of the time during 
which Scotch liquor-sellers had been in the habit of conducting 
their business. This was a direct attempt to diminish their trade, 
and consequently their profits, and there cannot be a doubt that 
most publicans in Scotland sufi'ered considerable loss by the operation 
of that Act. 

"Then, in 1860, we had Mr. Gladstone's Wine Licence Act, 
which established yet another form of liquor-selling, by permitting 
grocers and others to sell wine, and in some cases spirits, for con- 
sumption off the premises. Again, the argument urged in favour 
of this Act was, ' that people would be induced to purchase light 
wines at the grocers' and drink them under the restraining influence 
of home, instead of going to the public-house, where temptation to 
excess would be much stronger.' The House of Commons accepted 
the argument, and passed the Bill in the full hope and assurance 
that the publicans would be injured thereby ; and if such injury 
has resulted, it has been done without even the mention of such a 
thing as compensation. 

" The next Act of importance was that of 1869, introduced by 
Sir Selwyn Ibbetson, which placed beer licences under_ the control 



APPENDIX. 475 

of the magistrates and brought beer-sellers under a new set of regu- 
lations, by which the interests of many of that class were materially 
affected. There was one provision of the Act which illustrated our 
argument in a very special manner. Under that Act the rental 
qualification for beer-houses was very considerably raised, and all 
houses which were not up to the required standard forfeited the 
licence. It is true that the magistrates gave twelve months' time to 
afford opportunity for increasing the value by the addition of extra 
rooms ; but still the fact remains that there were large numbers of 
beer-sellers who had to forfeit their licences through no fault of their 
own, but simply through the operation of an Act of Parliament. 
Here were a number of men who held licences for the sale of 
beer on terms dictated by the State ; they had done nothing in 
violation of those terms ; but the State arbitrarily altered the con- 
ditions and imposed terms they could not fulfil, with the result 
that they had to relinquish their 'vested right' and sacrifice their 
' vested interest.' in Liverpool alone the number of beershops was 
reduced by about 300. All these people were compelled by Act of 
Parliament to retire from business without compensation. And 
this cannot be set down as an unforeseen result ; the very purpose 
and object of the measure was to get rid of the * low beershops.' 

"In 1872 Mr. Bruce's Bill was passed. Under this Act the 
hours of sale were reduced by about twenty-four hours a week, some 
time was taken off every day of the week at both ends of the day, 
and the houses were exposed to stringent inspection and subjected 
to irksome regulations, of which the keepers loudly complained. 
Publicans cried out that their interests were being hardly dealt 
with. It is extremely probable that every publican in the kingdom 
was injured more or less by the working of this Act. But the cry 
for compensation was not even raised in its feeblest form. Every- 
body agreed that the public good ought to be served even though 
publicans should lose. 

" The last instance of Parliamentary interference with this trade 
is that of the Irish Sunday Closing Bill. It will be easily remem- 
bered how hard the publicans fought against it — how they declared, 
time after time, that it meant ruin for them, as Sunday was the 
principal business day with them. But in spite of these declarations 
the Bill became law. This Bill afforded an opportunity of raising 
the question of compensation, which was done by Mr. P. J. Smythe, 
who moved that the Bill be recommitted in order that a clause 
might be inserted providing compensation to those who would be 
injured by it. The House rejected the proposal and refused to 
entertain the idea at all. 

" We have cited these manifold instances of Parliamentary 
interference in order to show that the conduct of Parliament in this 
matter lends no support whatever to the theory set up by our 
opponents. These facts establish one thing of importance in 



476 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

relation to this question — that the State has a perfect right to deal 
as it will with this traffic without regard to the pecuniary losses of 
individuals. The loiiic of these facts seems to be this: — If the 
State has a right to damage the interests and depreciate the value 
of the publicans' property to a small extent in order to serve the 
common weal, it has the same right to damage them to any extent 
for the same purpose. If it be granted that Parliament has the 
right to take away one-twelfth of the publicans' sale without com- 
pensation, it cannot be denied that it has the same right to take 
away the remainder. If for a given reason the State can rightly 
cause a man to lose a penny out of every shilling without com- 
pensating him for his loss, it has the same right for the same reason 
to cause him to lose the other elevenpence. There is no difference 
in principle; it is simply one of degree. It is just as right or just 
as wrong to rob a man of a penny as a pound. 

" A WoEKiNG Man." 



From the Alliance News, August 7, 1880 : — 

"Compensation to Publicans. 

" We now proceed to examine the second part of the case we 
have sketched. It is based entirely upon the statement that the 
licensing authority has no power to withdraw licences, except in 
the case of those who have been convicted of offences against the 
law; all others they are bound to renew. As a statement of the 
law,, we hold this to be incorrect ; but it undoubtedly is according 
to the practice of the courts. This is the strongest point our 
opponents urge, but we shall endeavour to show that it is far too 
weak to bear the heavy claim they seek to rest upon it. Tbe most 
that it proves is that at present the magistrates do not exercise 
power to refuse the renewal of a licence, except for certain 
reasons. But that does not in the least debar Parliament from 
expressly conferring the power on them. If Parliament did, any 
licence renewed afterwards would be renewed clearly subject to 
being revoked at the next licensing day. To say that the magistrates 
do not possess a certain power of refusal, does not limit the right of 
the State in conferring the power. And if the State may rightly 
confer such a power upon magistrates, it would be equally right 
for it to place the same power in the hands of the people or their 
representatives. 

" What is this licence for the loss of which so much money is 
claimed from the State ? It is simply a legal instrument, giving 
effect to an agreement between the State on the one hand and an 
individual on the other, by which the former gives to the latter 
permission to sell intoxicating liquor for a given period in con- 
sideration of a specific sum of money. All licences are granted ' for 



APPENDIX. 477 

one year, and no longer.' This is most distinctly stated on the 
back of every licence, along with the other conditions as to per- 
mitting drunkenness and disorderly conduct. W hat may be termed 
as the contract, then, is neither more nor less than permission to sell 
liquor at the times and in the manner prescribed by law, for the 
period of twelve months. When the term for which the licence 
was granted has expired, and the licensee has been allowed to carry 
on his trade according to agreement, he has then got all he paid for. 
He paid for permission to sell, he got it, made the most he could of 
it for his own benefit ; and, we submit, it is quite competent for 
Parliament to make a law instructing those who act in its behalf 
not to renew the engagement. 

" Another important point is the right of Parliament to alter 
the terms and conditions of licences. These are not pernjanent, but 
are, on the contrary, generally being changed. The State has 
always asserted its right to alter, in any way it thinks fit, the 
laws under which licences are held. It may cause licences to be 
granted for six months, a year, or five years; it may decide the 
days and hours during which the business may be conducted ; and 
at the expiration of one licence it can amend, alter, curtail, extend, 
destroy, or continue any of these conditions as affecting the next 
year's licence. Now it is claimed on behalf of the publicans that 
each individual holder of a licence has a vested interest in his 
licence for a longer period than that for which it has been granted. 
If that be so, then he must have a vested interest in the same kind 
of licence for next year as the one he has tliis. For instance, a man 
having a licence to sell on seven days of the week during 1880 has, 
according to this theory, a vested interest in a seven days' licence 
for 1881. If a licence, once granted, becomes the property of him 
who gets it, and his privileges under it are curtailed by one tenth, 
his 'property ' is damaged to precisely that amount. But has the 
State recognized a licence as property in that sense? We have 
already seen how the State has terminated the seven days' licence 
in Scutland and Ireland, and substituted for it a six days' licence, 
thus (iiminishing the value of the property without gianring any 
compensation whatever. Either the State has acted unjustly before, 
or it has now the right to carry the same principle further, and 
apply it to all the days of the week. The licence cannot be a 
'property' one day of tne week, and something else another. The 
Duke of Wellington was in the right when he said, in the discussion 
on the Bt er Bill, ' The fact is, those persons hold their licences from 
year to year, and at the expiration of each year all right ceases, and 
it is only the renewal of the licence which continues the right.' 

" This leads us to another point, viz., that a licence is a privilege 
and not a right. Being a privilege, it is not something a man can 
claim as by right. Mo man can go before the magistrate and 
demand a publican's licence as a right ; the only right he has is to 



478 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

ask, and it is the rio;h.t of the magistrates to grant or refuse. All 
the rights in the case belong to the State, and the privileges only 
belong to the publicans, and these piivileges are conferred upon 
them by the law, and can be modified or abolished at the will of 
the law-makers. It is absurd to argue that because the State grants 
a privilege once, it is bound to do so to the end of time. The very 
power to grant or refuse includes the power to withdraw, otherwise 
the State can only act in one direction. When this privilege has 
been granted, the man who receives it usually makes money more 
rapidly and more easily, perhaps, than he could in any other business. 
He does so, not because of his business ability, but simply because 
he is permitted to carry on a trade which those around him may not. 
He is relieved from the pressure of open competition. He is engaged 
in a protected business. If the privilege which allows him to do 
this be withdrawn, what injustice is done to him ? He is allowed 
to retain the money he has made, and the property he has accumu- 
lated ; he is simply told he must not make any more in that way. 
And then, forsooth, he is to be compensated, and for what ? For 
the money he would have made I Not compensation for actual loss, 
but compensation for loss in prospective ! 

" It will be readily conceded that the liquor traffic derives its 
special value from the fact of its being a monopoly. It is this 
which makes men so anxious to get into it, and to pay so much 
more than the actual value for premises, goodwill, etc. This is not 
a value which has been created either by the publican's industry or 
capital ; it is altogether outside of and independent of any action of 
his own ; it is a fictitious value created for him by the State. What 
the State has created it can destroy. There is one method of doing 
so which no one would dispute the right of the State to employ. It 
might destroy the monopoly by making the trade free; then this 
special fictitious value would be entirely gone, and no one would 
have the audacity or the impudence to ask for compensation in that 
case. It is perfectly reasonable to say that if the State has a right 
to destroy the monopoly by legislating in one direction, it has just 
the same right to destroy it by legislating in another. 

"There is just one other point which has a special bearing upon 
the question of permissive prohibition. As everybody knows, 
publicans are licensed to supply a supposed public want, and not that 
they may make haste and get rich. If it could be shown that the 
public ' want ' no longer existed, then the reason for granting licences 
would be gone ; and if the State made it a condition of licensing 
that the ratepayers of each district should be in favour of it, it would 
only be exercising its right to impose fresh conditions. 

" We think we have now fully shown that this demand for com- 
pensation is unreasonable, and that the principles of ' justice and fair- 
ness ' would not be violated by its being disregarded. There may be 
cases of special hardship, where the instinct of generosity might 



APPENDIX. 479 

prompt some sort of relief; but that would be far different from a 
wholesale compensation to all the multifarious interests of business 
and property connected with the traffic. We cannot help thinking 
that the reason why the publicans and their advocates insist so 
strongly upon this claim is not because of what they will get so 
much as of the use they hope to make of it in delaying legislation. 
They evidently regard it as a sort of ' red rag ' to frighten John Bull 
with; but they would better beware how far they press their claim, 
for there are not wanting indications that if the extinguished part 
of the traffic is to be compensated it must be at the expense of the 
remnant. However, it is to be hoped that people and Parliament 
will not be deterred by any oblique considerations upon this 
point, but that they will give effect to a policy of justice and fairness 
towards the people, and that they will not be dismayed by the 
audacity of a great monopoly which has unfortunately been allowed 
to grow up, and which has grown at the expense of everything truly 
great, noble, and good. 

"A Working Man." 



From the Alliance News, April 9, 1881 : — 
"On Compensation to Discarded Drink Traffickers. 

" At a meeting at Stratford, Essex, on March 16th, the eminent 
brewer, Mr. E. N. Buxton, avowed himself in favour of Local 
Option, if interpreted as he and the Right Honourable John Bright 
interpret it. But he added that he claimed compensation, though 
whether to publicans, to brewers, or to distillers — or to all of them 
■ — the reports of his speech leave obscure. Moreover, by his tart 
remark, that many people want to do good, provided that it be 
not with their own money, he very distinctly implied that it is 
dishonest to refuse compensation to traders in drink when their 
licence is not renewed. But while he distinctly claims compensa- 
tion, he leaves us wholly in the dark on what grounds he imagines 
his right to rest. Nothing is easier than to say, ' It is our right,' 
and give no proof; and such a procedure leaves us without any 
argument to attack. It is, we suppose, a prudent method ; such 
as a Lord Chancellor counselled to one who was about to become a 
colonial governor. * Announce your judgments simply, but never 
give reasons for them.' Nor is it only those in the trade who so 
deal with us. Mr. Herbert Grladstone recently seemed to announce 
in his father's name that compensation to the trade would be an 
absolute condition of any such reform as we seek ; but he gave no 
reason whatever foT* compensation ; hence there is nothing to refute. 
The Right Honourable John Bright certainly in one speech gave a 
sort of reason ; and fur want of something to grapple with, we shall 
give more attention to his argument than it at all deserves. He 



480 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

said the precedent of compensation to slaveholders in 1833 was a 
reason for compensation to drink-sellers. 

" Now, first, if precedent is to weigh anything, we have an 
overwhelming precedent on the opposite side. In a multitude of 
rural districts the squires, lords, and magistrates have totally 
exterminated drink-shops. Above ten years ago a Committee of 
the Convocation of Canterbury published the names of more than 
fourteen hundred parishes and townships in that province alone, 
where this process of extinction was complete, and was acquiesced 
in. It was done by the mere will of the landlords, over the heads 
both of the people and of the drink-sellers. No meeting of popular 
indignation can be quoted to support Professor Fawcett and the 
late Mr. Stuart Mill on the one side ; nor any appeal to a court of 
justice on the part of publicans, brewers, or distillers, to demand 
compensation from the high-handed landlords and magistrates. 
They have everywhere submitted meeisly, without complaint or 
resistance, to a happy extinction which began probably forty years 
ago. Such conduct of the drink traffickers is not merely a precedent 
— that word is too feeble. Their conduct is what Koman laywers 
would call a proRJudicium, a weighty previous decision, and one 
pronounced by themselves. We say of them with Cicero, con- 
Jitentem habemus reum ; i.e., we have an opponent, who, in a 
like previous case, confessed he had no claim, and, very wealthy 
though he is, wisely abstained from spending his money in an 
utterly hopeless lawsuit. It cannot be pretended that if the people 
vote down the drink traffic, a claim of compensation at once arises, 
which did not exist against landlords and magistrates when they 
extinguished the shops at their private will, and often for their 
private oain as well as their family comfort. No one bearing the 
name of Buxton will say that the pecuniary interest of a squire is 
a more sacred cause than the moral and material welfare of a com- 
munity ; nor do we believe that the Right Honourable John Bright 
will maintain that a landlord ought to have a greater right to 
extinguish a local trade at his private will than a local community 
to do the same thing by public vote. The demand of compensation 
from the public is simply monstrous from traders who never dared 
to claim it from landlords and magistrates. 

" Nor is this the only precedent which utterly confutes the 
claim. In past centuries it was a received principle, acted upon 
unanimously, suddenly, and without compensation to traders, to 
forbid exportation of food, if food were scarce and inconveniently 
dear. For the same reason the conversion of grain into malt was 
occasionally stopped; and, however sudden the prohibition, no 
compensation was given. But to assert a negative may be im- 
prudent. Can, then, Mr. Buxton adduce any instance of compensa- 
tion in such case ? 

" We now turn to the Right Honourable John Bright's imagined 



APPENDIX. 481 

precedent in the corapensation to the slaveholders. First of all, we 
deny that he has any right to call it compensation. ' Mr. Secretary 
Stanley ' (afterwards Earl of Derby) did, no doubt, call it compensa- 
tion, but protest against this word was instantly made by Daniel 
O'Connell, and nothing in the previous speeches and arguments 
justified the phrase. Parliament voted the twenty millions as a 
liberal gift to prevent the islands from going out of cultivation 
through the inability of planters to pay wages ; so great was the 
waste and extravagance, so extensive were the mortgages. Trembling 
lest insurrection should ravao;e and swallow up their whole property, 
and conscious that the original kidnapping of Africans was illegal, 
the planters gladly accepted the ample gift ; but had no sooner got 
it than they called it compensation, and before long declared it to 
be inadequate. But suppose the Eight Honourable John Bright 
to be correct in calling it compensation, still it is a gross fallacy to 
represent it as a precedent applicable to the drink traffic ; for the 
slaveholders had one very plausible argument, which may be called 
their stronghold, to which nothing at all akin can be alleged by 
the drink traffickers — namely, though the primitive kidnapping 
was forbidden by English statute, and the colonial law courts had 
no right to enact an enslavement which English common law 
ignored, yet as a fact they had winked at the illegality, and had 
treated the negroes as rightful property; and, what is more, the 
English courts had acquiesced in the same doctrine in cases which 
could be quoted. Nay, old Lord Stowell, a most revered judge, 
dishonoured himself by a decision in favour of slaves, as property, 
a few years before the Act of Liberation. Can the Right Honourable 
John Bright appeal to cases in which a publican has sold his 
(imagined) right to a perpetuity of licence, and a court of law has 
recognized the sale as a valid transaction? Until he can do so, we 
have a right to see in his attempt to make the cases parallel, a 
fallacy quite unworthy of a robust and honest mind. 

" But that is not all. Though he is honoured by the title Privy 
Councillor, this argument of his for compensation denotes that he 
has not understood within what limits and for what good reasons 
precedent may be adduced in argument. Where justice points to 
a right and a wrong, appeal to precedent is wholly out of place. 
Only where there is no clear right and wrong can any weight be 
given to precedent. If an injustice has become ever so customary, 
that does not constitute a right ; else slavery of the worst type 
would be justified by precedent. Precedent ought to be invoked 
only when by reason of the ab&ence of adequate moral argument 
for right and wrong, good men are liable to quarrel about things in 
themselves indifferent. In such cases precedent is very valuable. 
Thus, when a king dies, in one country the chief lawyer, in another 
the chief ecclesiastic, in another the president of a senate or council, 
may have the duty of summonmg the notables who are to pronounce 

2 I 



482 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

and proclaim the new sovereign. One method may be nearly as 
good as another ; but unless in each nation precedent decide on the 
details, confusion and quarrel may arise. But where right and 
wrong are clear, to flee to precedent or analogy is the part of the 
sophist, not of the just man. Now in the case before us the right 
is perfectly clear, and if the Eight Honourable John Bright does not 
see it, so much the worse for his intellect. No publican ever receives 
a licence to sell intoxicating drink for any previous services which 
he has done, nor for any personal virtue, but because it is presumed 
that the public interest needs him. He never receives a licence to 
last more than twelve months, and Mr. E. N. Buxton tells us that 
the licence confers a great additional pecuniary value on the house. 
This the publican, or the brewer behind him, receives gratuitously. 
What epithet but impudent justly describes the conduct of a man 
who declares that because a privilege is gratuitously granted him 
for twelve months, therefore he has a right to it for a perpetuity ; 
and that if it is not renewed he has a just claim to compensation ? 
The difficulty of reasoning against such pretensions is precisely the 
same as we encounter when an audacious man proclaims that man- 
stealing and fornication are legitimate. One knows not from what 
first principles to argue against men of this class." 



From the Alliance News, December 10, 1881 : — 
" The ' Pall Mall Gazette ' on Compensation-. 

" In a recent number, the Pall Mall Gazette remarked that ' it 
is already sometimes contended that if in the interests of public 
peace and security the State deems it necessary to deprive any 
section of its subjects of their lawful property, it is bound to com- 
pensate the sufferers. A public benefit, it is urged, should not be 
sought by the injury of individuals, and if the State confiscates the 
State should compensate. This principle, they say, was acted on 
in the case of the abolition of purchase in the army, in that of the 
disestablishment of the Irish Church, and in what some take to be 
the most crucial instance of all, that of the emancipation of the 
slaves in the British colonic?!. Even the holders of Scotch patronage 
were compensated under the Act abolishing patronage; and the 
admitted necessity for compensating the vested interests engaged in 
the liquor trade has hitherto been the most formidable obstacle in 
the path of temperance reformers. What are the answers to this 
line of argument ? 

'"In the first place, the cases quoted by way of analogy are not 
all of them real analogies. Compensation to publicans, for instance, 
has only been proposed in case they should be totally expropriated. 
In the same way the Irish landlords will be compensated whenever 
the tenants buy up all their rights and interests. Restriction is not 



APPENDIX. 483 

the same as expropriation. Where a Sunday Closing Act is put 
into force the publican is deprived by it of one-seventh of his means 
of earning a livelihood. Yet never either in Ireland or in Wales 
has compensation for this abrogation of a right of which the publican 
was previously in full possession been either paid or suggested. 
Take another case. Before the Licensing Acts were passed publicans 
were entitled to sell drink to children and drunken persons. For 
reasons of public morality this legal right, which, morally speaking, 
ought never to have been exercised, was taken away, to the publican's 
pecuniary detriment, but assuredly no one ever dreamed of offering 
compensation.' 

"In a letter to the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, dated 
Oxford, December 1, ' A, E. M.' writes : ' Sir, — In your article, in 
which you clearly demonstrated the injustice of a claim for com- 
pensation by landlords in Ireland who had secured compensation for 
themselves by rack-renting in the past, and who thereby had placed 
themselves in the position rather of debtors to their tenants than of 
just claimants for compensation, you alluded to the probability of 
compensation being due to publicans in the event of the houses 
which are occupied by them being deprived of the licences. These 
houses are licensed for the benefit of the public. The magistrates 
annually determine the continuation or withdrawal of the licence. 
If it is found that a licensed house in a certain locality is hurtful, 
and if, therefore, the licence is withdrawn, should compensation be 
given to the publican? Say that in a certain street, consisting of 
fifty houses of equal value, the proprietor of one of the houses shall 
have had sufficient local influence to obtain a licence for his house, 
the value of his house is at once doubled. The value of all the 
other houses in the street is probably depreciated on account of the 
nuisance created by the proximity of the public-house; on the 
extinction of the public-house, if compensation is to be given to any 
of the houses in the street, should it be given to the one which has 
derived great profits for many years on account of the fictitious 
value given to it in preference to its neighbours ; or should it not 
rather be given to the houses which have suffered depreciation by 
reason of the disturbance created by an unpleasant neighbour? 
The rack-renting landlords in Ireland and the licensed house-owners 
in England have under the law long enjoyed the advantages of the 
law. They have both enriched themselves at the expense of others. 
They have both already received full compensation.' 

" On the following day the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette said 
— 'The precedent of the compensation paid to the West Indian 
slave-owners for the emancipation of their slaves is being diligently 
" worked " by others than Irish landlords. The chairman of the 
London Licensed Vintners' Protective Association has this week 
been over to Dublin to explain his views as to the necessity for 
compensating Irish publicans for the sacrifice of one-seventh of their 



484 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

business by the Sunday Closing Act. " If restrictive measures were 
passed," said he, "why should not the licensed traders be com- 
pensated for the loss of their business ? Surely they were as much 
and more entitled to compensation than the West Indian slave- 
owners were to compensation when the slaves were emancipated." 
The analogy holds as good in one case as the other. That is to say, 
it is equally worthless in both,' '* 



From the Alliance News, October 9, 1880 : — 
" Papers on Local Option, read at the Church Congress. 
" (Bev. Canon Hopkins's Paper.) 
"what do you mean by local option? 

" This question is sometimes asked, almost with an air of 
triumph, by persons who think that a satisfactory answer is 
impossible. The questioner is, of course, an Englishman. He will 
perhaps say that he knows the English people well ; and that he 
knows their habits too well. He, for his part, thinks it dangerous 
to put power into the hands of the people, lest they should use it 
badly, and make matters worse than they are. Perhaps he takes a 
different line, and boasts that English people are free. He will 
oppose anything which curtails their liberty by one jot or one 
tittle. He hates the petty tyranny of self-iighteous majorities. 
He stands up for the rights of suffering minorities. He is resolved 
at all costs to uphold the birthright of every Englishman (a right 
now largely claimed by English women too) to get drunk at his 
own expense, whenever and wherever he may choose ! 

" Passing by such disputations as these, without further remark, 
I will give an answer to the question: What do you mean by Local 
Option ? 

" By Local Option, then, I mean a branch of local self-government. 
Within living memory the area of local self-government has been 
progressively widened. Without at all ascribing perfection to this 
kind of government, I venture to claim for it that in all cases it has 
worked well. 

" Modern sanitary legislation is an example in point. The 
first Public Health Act was a measure the general scope of which 
was to confer large powers upon specified local authorities, which 
the inhabitants of the locality were at liberty to call into active 
existence, or not, as they pleased. These powers enabled them to 
remove nuisances, to construct drainage works, to compel house- 
holders to connect their dwellings with the new drainage system, 
to provide a supply of pure water, and other things essential to the 
public-house. There was an outcry then about the infringement of 
private rights. But private rights which had been proved to be 



APPENDIX. 485 

public wrongs were compelled to give way. An Englishman's 
house ceased to be his castle, so far that he could no longer turn it 
into a public nuisance, and set his neighbours' remonstrances at 
defiance. Every one was compelled to submit to authority. The 
best results quickly followed. Pig-styes disappeared from the back 
streets of our towns, cesspools were filled up, dust-heaps and offal 
were sv/ept away, poor people were enabled to breathe purer air, 
and little children were not so frequently, as aforetime, stifled in 
their infancy by sewer gas and foul stenches. Grood people rejoiced, 
and a few malcontents, who used to grow rich upon the rents of over- 
crowded cellars and other fever dens, after making a snarling protest, 
in very shame shrank away and vanished into silence and oblivion. 

" Local self-government is no new thing in England. It is older 
than the parish vestry, older than the Imperial Parliament, older 
than the venerable convocations of the Church. The sphere of its 
activities has widened itself into considerable breadth and variety. 
Tlie people have a potential voice in the management of most of 
their local affairs, and in the expenditure of the rates they have to 
pay. Over and above sanitary matters, local officers and local 
boards or vestries have the control and management of highways, 
and public lighting, and fire-engines ; of constables, of poor relief, 
and maintenance of lunatics, of elementary education; as well as 
limited powers to regulate village feasts, fairs, and statutes. In all 
these cases there are Acts of Parliament which confer powers and 
impose restrictions, and provide for official inspection and audit ; 
but the executive is local, and the funds are raised and expended 
by local authorities. 

" Local Option, then, is a new branch of local self-government. 
The advocates of Local Option desire to extend to the drink traffic 
the control of local self-government. 

" If it be asked why a claim is set up for local control over the 
sale of strong drink, and not over the sale of bread, or meat, or 
calico, the answer is plain. The law has always controlled the 
sale of strong drink, and has required periodical certificates of 
character from all who apply for a periodical renewal of the licence 
which empowers them to sell strong drink. No new principle is 
asked for. Kestriction and control have always been imposed upon 
dealers in intoxicating drinks, and never upon butchers, bakers, 
or haberdashers ; or if ever, they are imposed no longer. 

" The claim for local control over the granting, the renewal, the 
suspension, or the suppression of licences, rests upon clear and well- 
defined reasons. Why are licensing laws enacted ? Why are 
licences granted ? They are granted avowedly in the interests of 
the people at large, r.ot of a class or section only. In fact, licences 
are avowedly granted — 

" (1) For the benefit of the locality, i.e., to supply an alleged 
want or need. 



486 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

" (2) For the protection of the locality, i.e., to take care that 
no harm shall be done to the lives, or the property, or the morals 
of the inhabitants. 

" This being so, who are the best and fittest judges of these 
things ? Is it better that the people most interested should judge 
for themselves, or that some other authority should judge for'them ? 
Let us see how the matter really stands. 

" 1. In the first place, the inhabitants of the locality are the 
persons for whose benefit the licence is granted. It is to quench 
their thirst that the drinks are sold. It is to supply their wants 
that the licensed house or houses are to be opened. Who, then, 
is likely to know what they really want so well as the inhabitants 
themselves ? Who are so likely as they to stand out and make a 
determined resistance if an attempt should be made to issue 
licences, not for the benefit of the inhabitants, but for the benefit of 
some one else, who is to be made rich at their cost, and out of their 
hard earnings ? 

"2. Once more, the inhabitants of the locality are the persons 
who must suffer if licences are improperly granted, or if licensed 
houses are badly conducted. If a man or woman be turned into 
the streets drunk and disorderly, the inhabitants of the locality 
have to listen to all the quarrelling and filthy abuse, and noises, 
and blasphemous outcries which ordinarily go on until the drunkard 
becomes sober again, or is forcibly removed and locked up. 

"3. Again, iif a drunken man or a drunken woman commits a 
breach of the peace, or some brutal crime, the inhabitants of the 
locality often get a bad name and a foul reputation, besides having 
to pay the police who apf)rehended, the judge who tries the offender, 
as well as the prison officials, and the prison maintenance, if the 
culprit be convicted. 

" 4. Further than all this, if drunken men and besotted women 
neglect or refuse to send their children to school, the inhabitants 
of the locality pay the attendance and visitiag officer, whose duty 
it is to look up neglected children, as well as the expenses of the 
proceedings ; and they also suffer from the loss of time and labour 
which necessarily supervenes, 

" 5. Once more, if a working man, or many working men, fre- 
quent the licensed houses, and there squander away the wages 
which would otherwise feed and clothe and educate their children, 
some of the inhabitants of the locality have to go hungry and cold 
and naked and ignorant, while the sots are drinking themselves 
drunk, and others have to pay increased poor and education rates 
to enable the idle and the dissolute to prolong their wasteful 
orgies ! 

" On these grounds (and I must be content to state them 
rapidly and briefly) I assert that the inhabitants of the locality are 
the natural and fitting judges of two things — (1) of their own wants; 



APPENDIX. 487 

(2) of the best way to protect themselves from the manifold injuries 
which accrue from excessive or improper sales of strong drink. 

" I rest my case upon the naked principles of common sense and 
common justice. If a gentleman who lives in a park and owns a 
whole parish can say, ' Our people do not want a public-house, and 
no one shall compel them to have one ' (a kind of local option, be 
it observed, which prevails in more than eleven hundred parishes in 
the southern counties of England alone) then I contend that, in 
some way and to some extent which shall be real and effective, the 
inhabitants of any and of every locality, be it a street, or a district, 
or a town, or a village, ought to have the right and the power to 
say, ' We know our own wants, and we know our own minds ; we 
do not want more, or we do not want so many public-houses, and 
we will not have them.' " 



From the Alliance News, June 24, 1882 : — 

" Has the Publican any Claim to Compensation for the 
Loss OF HIS Licence undek Local Option? 

(By the Eev. S. Edger, of New Zealand.) 

** As I did not hear Dr. Wallis's address on this subject, I can 
make no pretence of replying to it ; but I am led to think that it 
failed, wliere all attempts to justify compensation do fail, so far as 
I have been able to see — viz., in giving no answer to two questions : 
For what specifically is compensation to be given ? And who is to 
give it ? It is no answer to the first to say, ' Compensation is to be 
given for the loss of the licence,' unless you show some particular 
injury or injustice that is done to the man from whom you take it ; 
and that it was not in his power to avoid that injur}'- or injustice. 
Numbers of people have things taken from them, directly or in- 
directly, for the loss of which they would never dream of asking 
compensation. I take from a man the property I have lent or 
hired out to him, and which he has turned to great profit to himself, 
because I am not satisfied with his use of it. I take away the 
liberty I have given him to shoot over my grounds, on which he has 
reared a lucrative trade in game, because 1 find he is doing mischief. 
Would any one presume to ask me to give him compensation ? 
Certainly not; unless I had explicitly guaranteed to him continued 
possession, or had inflicted on him some injury that he could not 
avoid, over and above the discontinuance of the privilege and its 
fruits. 

" It is no answer to the second question to say, ' He should be 
compensated out of the public revenue.' Whose is the public 
revenue ? Have the owners of it been instrumental in any way in 
injuring the publican ? Perhaps half of them have never consented 
to there being any publican ; perhaps a great number of them have 



488 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

strongly protested against it. Why take their money? Many 
people have exceedingly loose notions about public revenue, as 
though, it belonged to no one, and might be used for any purpose ; 
whence come many of the greatest calamities that befall nations. 
The public revenue should be used with more rigid conscientiousness 
than any private income. A gentleman said to me the other day, 
'I know the publicans have no real claim in justice, but it would 
be worth while, and it's the easiest and cheapest way, to buy them 
all out, and have done with it.' To this I most seriously demur. It 
is never worth while to do wrong. Though it sometimes looks 
easy to do a little wrong, and secure a little right, it rarely turns 
out easy, and never cheap. To take public revenue for what it 
was not given, and without the owner's consent, is misappropriation 
— which is just a milder term for robbery ; and, in the end, is 
neither easy nor cheap. 

" I am wishing, therefore, to inquire into the grounds of com- 
pensation ; and shall be truly glad if any one, whatever view he 
may take, can help me to throw any light on so important a 
question ; which, it may be a^^sumed, we should all wish to see 
settled in an indisputable manner. 

** 1'here are three kinds of right or justice ; and if compensation 
is right, it must fall under one of three, for there is no other. There 
is natural right, between man and man ; that is what any man as a 
man owes to or may claim from any other man, as a man. There 
is social or legal right, founded on the consent, expressed or tacit, 
of the many, growing out of the social structure, which is con- 
tinually being more completely evolved. And there is the higher, 
moral, or Christian right ; founded on true benevolence, or the second 
great command. These, I think, cover the whole ground ; or, if 
not, I should be glad if any one would tell us of any other right, or 
point out anything erroneous in thus defining the ground. If we 
want to know whether a thing is right, it is of the first importance 
to commence the inquiry with a clear conception of all that is 
involved in the term ' right.' A man clearly has a right to his 
just debts, to common esteem from his fellow-man, that he may be 
treated as a man ; to such freedom as does not infringe on another's 
freedom, so that he may act as a man — he has a right to all this, 
on the simple ground of his humanity. He has a right to that 
which the social condition justifies him in expecting, as a member 
of society, or a citizen. And he has a right to shaie in that good- 
will which the highest law of reciprocal love makes every man's 
duty. If a publican who loses his licence has any claim to com- 
pensation, such claim must come under one of these definitions of 
right. This point should be here perfectly settled. 

" T. What, then, is the natural right or justice of the case ? 

"There are two species of property to which every man has a 
natural right, and which you ought not to take from him without 



APPENDIX. 489 

adequate compensation. (1) Accumulated property, including all 
that a man has saved out of his industry, in any form whatever ; 
and all that has been given to him by those having a right to give 
it. He has no right to what he has stolen, or what some one else 
has stolen and given to him. He has no natural right to that 
subtle kind of property which has been termed the ' unearned 
increment,^ because that entirely depends on society, and, if any at 
all, must be a social or legal right. The property he can naturally 
claim must have come to him justly by industry or by gift. (2) 
The other species of property — the term property may appear 
singular, but is justifiable, as the only appropriate term — to which 
he has a natural right, is the free use of all his powervS, without 
detriment to others, and the enjoyment of their fruits. It is wrong 
to prevent any man from cultivating all his faculties, and turning 
them to the very best advantage, supposing always that he injures 
no one else. I wish I could know whether any one claims any 
other riiiht on natural grounds, for I have not been able to discover 
any not included in these. It needs great care all through to see 
precisely on what ground we can stand. 

" Any violation of these rights would form good ground for a 
claim to compensation. 

" Are they violated in the case we are considering? 

" When you take away the publican's licence, do you touch his 
accumulated capital ? Do you touch any of the enormous profits 
he has made? Do you touch any of his material in building, or in 
anything else ? Not that I can see. What you do is to say that 
he shall no longer use it in any particular way, because that way of 
using it is found to be ruinous to public morality. Now, no man 
can have a natural right to use any of his property in such a way 
— being an injury to others. You would be wrong in depriving 
him of his property, but not in forbidding that injurious use of it. 
Just as a man has no right so to use his firearms as to endanger the 
lives of his neighbours — and you very properly prohibit his doing 
so. Suppose he were to say, ' By this prohibition you cut off one 
source of my revenue — for it is thus I test their strength and 
efficiency — and I claim compensation,' you would simply smile at 
his claim. You would say to him, ' It is your business to find out 
some other way of using them ; but whether you do or do not, 
whether you can or not, you must not be allowed to endanger your 
neighbours' lives.' What society or the law might say to such a 
claim we shall consider by-and-by. To establish any such claim 
on grounds of natural right is utterly impossible. Ail that he has 
a natural right to is there untouched, and he can have no natural 
right to any use of it. that is fatal or pernicious to others. It cannot 
be too often repeated, as lucidly evident, that before you can 
establish a claim to compensation, you must show that some right 
has been violated. 



490 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

" Though it is not essential to the argument, it strengthens it, 
that even if any claim were allowed, it would be impossible justly 
to estimate it. For you would have to find out all other uses to 
which that property could be put, and their values, and by com- 
parison to strike the balance, before you could arrive at a fair result 
— a manifestly impossible thing. 

" Or do you interfere with the man's exercise of his powers and 
energies? I should readily grant that any such infringement of 
his natural rights would form an indisputable ground for compensa- 
tion, since there is no natural right so perfectly beyond question as 
that of the use of all one's powers for the great ends of life — always 
under the condition, without injury to others. Suppose, then, a 
man has spent time, labour, and money in the cultivation of his 
powers, in the attainment of special aptitude for any calling, being 
both legitimate and not injurious to others ; and suppose that then, 
on grounds of public (or private) ability, he is forbidden to exercise 
that power or skill, the source whence that prohibition proceeds is 
certainly bound to render compensation. No doubt this feeling is 
in the minds of many, and is, 1 think, better founded than any 
other. In some cases it may be well founded. I should be quite 
prepared to admit it, exceptionally, so far as providing some other 
opening. As, for instance, in the case of poor widows and worn-out 
decrepits. But then this is purely exceptional, and must be so 
treated ; not in the very least degree touching the general question, 

*' On the general question it has to be considered that no special 
training is required by the publican ; that in no calling is there less 
exercise of any powers, either bodily or mental — which accounts for 
the fact that those wlao fail in anything (or everything) else take 
to this ; that any powers employed in this could be better employed 
otherwise ; that in taking away the licence you leave untouched the 
best part of his calling as hotel-keeper ; that if he was ever fit for 
anything else, he ought to be just as fit for it now, and if not fit for 
anything else, then his proper place is some refuge for the destitute. 

" But, even beyond this — very much so — it may be said, with- 
out fear of contradiction (it has repeatedly been said by many of 
those who are best able to judge, publicans themselves), that any 
other exercise of a man's powers would be preferable, better for the 
man himself, but for the single circumstance, that no other offers 
such facilities for making great and rapid gains with very little 
labour. 

" It is impossible to substantiate any natural right to the 
* goodwill ' of the business ; for if any right exists, it must rest on 
social or legal grounds, since the business depends entirely on 
society and the monopoly granted by law, which can never con- 
stitute natural right. 

" Thus, I think, we have disposed of the question of natural 
right, and any claim to compensation founded thereon. This is 



APPENDIX. 491 

the largest and strongest part of the question, though perhaps 
not the most difficult, since natural right is both universal and 
perpetual, which, in the very nature of things, no other kind of 
right can be. 

" II. What is the social or legal right ? There are two distinct 
ways of putting this : 

" (1) I hardly think any one wdll demur to this principle : 
That it is not just that law should confer any special privilege on 
any man, or continue him in the enjoyment of it, except on the 
ground of some benefit rendered by him, as an equivalent for it. 
1'his is, indeed, a fundamental principle of all impartial legislation, 
as opposed to class legislation, which is always unjust. So perfectly 
clear is it, that no man ever questions it, unless his self-interest 
comes in and gives a bias. And, without exception, the man w^ho 
then questions it will be the first stoutly to affirm it against any 
other claimant to be so exceptionally treated. I know there are 
people who seem to think that if you only put a wrong thing into 
a law, you make it right, and so never inquire whether the law 
itself is right. I do not see much use in arguing with such 
people : no argument ever touches them. Were they capable of 
seeing an argument, they would not need showing that no law can 
make a wrong thing right, and no wrong law can ever originate a 
legal right. We are considering rights. This is of most essential 
importance ; because you can never establish a claim until you 
have found a right. You must therefore show that the law is right 
in granting to the publican the special privilege of the licence. 
This can be done on no other ground than that of some benefit 
rendered by him. Surely we have come to a deadlock in the way 
of compensation here. Remember the law has no right to confer 
a privilege without benefit rendered. No right, no claim. There- 
fore no claim without benefit rendered. No man who knows what 
he is talking about can deny that logic. What benefit, then, has 
the publican rendered for the privilege of his licence ? It is useless 
to talk about accommodation, convenience, etc., for these now have 
nothing to do with the licence, though they once had. With all 
the thousands of houses of accommodation without licences ; with 
the small accommodation — comparatively — for the extent of the 
property, with licence, it would be waste time to argue on that 
ground. The only question is, has the licensed sale of alcohol 
rendered any benefit ? For an answer to that question I will appeal 
to others. 

" I would ask the thousands of judges, magistrates, gaolers, 
keepers of hospitals and asylums, superintendents of police and 
policemen, who h".ve borne testimony thousands of times, that 
the service rendered has consisted in the production of crime, 
disease, insanity, and every form of human wickedness and misery. 
I would ask the thousands of ministers and medical men, who 



492 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

would answer : — the first — that it is the great source of irreligion ; 
the second — that it prodigiously and inevitably swells their pro- 
fession. I would ask innumerable philanthropists and reformers, 
who mournfully lament that it is the arch-enemy of all reform an.d 
of all benevolent aims. I would ask the millions of injured women, 
and degraded children, whose bruised bodies and silent tears would 
with eloquent pathos implore that such services might be rendered 
no longer. I would appeal to the myriads of the dead, dead through 
drink, whose history is still vocal with the anguish and despair 
that found no utterance from the living lips. And I know that 
from this immense crowd of witnesses would come the deep, heart- 
felt answer, No ! The only service rendered is recorded in blood 
and tears. And what privilege can that justify ? 

" I must keep the argument fast to this point. No service 
rendered for it, the privilege of monopoly that the hcence confers 
on the publican is legally and morally unjust. Are you going to 
compensate a man who has unjustly enjoyed a great commercial 
privilege, because you say to him, 'We can no longer continue this 
injustice in your favour ' ? That is neither law nor social equity. 
Both would say, ' The claim for compensation lies rather the other 
way.' 

" Mr. Chamberlain, M.P. for Birmingham, uses the following 
language in reference to the Irish landlords : — ' I cannot conceive 
that they have any right to claim compensation for restriction and 
limitation of powers which they ought never to have been permitted 
to enjoy. In our English legislation there are numberless precedents 
in which legal rights have been found to be in conflict with public 
morality and public interest, and have been restricted and limited ; 
and I am not aware of any such cases in which compensation has 
been given to those who have been thus treated.' This is from an 
article in the Nineteenth Century, the writer of which is trying to 
disprove Mr. Chamberlain's argument. But the only case he brings 
forward is that of slavery; while I cannot discover in the article 
one single intelligible position he takes, still less makes good, against 
Mr. Chamberlain's clear statement. 

" (2) The other way of looking at it is this : A privilege that 
the law bestows the law can revoke, provided that no agreement 
is broken, no promise violated, no understanding set at nought. 
This can require no further proof. It is so obvious that attempts 
are always made to bring in tacit promises or understandings ; but 
that cannot be done. No licence is perpetual. Why is it not made 
so, if that is the intention ? Every one knows that a proposition to 
grant such licences would elicit as indignant a resistance as did 
Mr. Gladstone's audacious and insane proposition to license railway 
carriages. It is all very true that the withholding a licence pre- 
viously granted is not the rule, but it is often done, as recently at 
the Thames. There and then Mr. Ehrenfried claimed damages. 



APPENDIX. 493 

Not a little instructive is it that a journal, famous for its advocacy 
of compensation, told us on that occasion that if Mr. Ehrenfried did 
not obtain damages, that would settle once for all the question of 
compensation. We know he did not obtain damages. That, how- 
ever, did not settle the question of compensation ; but this did : — ■ 
That he durst not take his case into any court, because he knew, 
as every one knew, that neither law, nor equity, nor social propriety 
could have awarded him one penny. It may be true that men 
presume upon the renewal of the licence, just as they presume that 
a volcano will not burst out again because it is now silent ; though 
it was silent before it buried in ruins or shook to pieces whole 
cities, with their living multitudes. If men choose to presume, 
they must in either case take the consequences. It is a miserably 
poor ground for compensation, that when a man has met a pro- 
bability with his eyes wide open, the probability has become a 
reality. I can grant that, forty years ago, a publican might plead 
very fairly, ' We ought to have some notice of the withdrawal of 
this privilege.' But I submit that forty years is a very liberal 
notice. They had that notice then, such notice as all wise men 
observe (in the signs of the times), and it has been repeated inces- 
santly, ever since, underlined, and in all sorts of conspicuous colours. 
If they will not take it, that is their own look-out. With the 
agitation that has gone on for forty years — with the actual adoption 
of prohibition in almost innumerable places, and compensation never 
thought of in a single instance — with the rapidly growing convic- 
tion that come it must — with the admission of Grovernments that 
something of the kind is absolutely essential ; if the trade will not 
accept the notice, I see not how any rational man can wish to 
compensate it for such enormous blindness or stupidity. That is 
one advantage of the gradual progress of the question — which is all 
that its advocates desire — that every man has due warning. But if 
he will not be warned, there is no help for him ; he must go down 
in the storm that he has long seen coming — like all other such men 
— losing through his wilfulness what, without any trouble, he could 
in due time have saved from ruin. 

" Thus have we disposed of the social or legal right, unless it 
can be shown to rest on some ground that I have not been able to 
discover. 

"III. I should admit that there may be still higher grounds 
on which this question should be considered — higher than either 
that of natural right or that of legal or social right — that high 
moral ground on which purest principles of Christian nobleness or 
generosity should control our conduct. For there are occasions 
when moral consiH orations may compel us to a course of action 
which could not on any ground be claimed from us by others. As 
I, an individual, may feel myself constrained to conduct which no 
one could demand of me, so may it be with a community or a body 



494 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

of men. We can then imagine that the publicans may be placed 
in a position such that we should feel it incumbent on us to make 
the compensation which they would have no ground for claiming. 
This was the ground on which compensation was given in the only 
case brought forward in this matter — that of slavery. It is the 
ground on which it might be justified, not as a precedent, but as 
something new and unexpected in the world's history. Since then 
other new principles have come to light. 

"Supposing a man, shut out from profitable employment by 
a course of events involved in the public welfare, under these con- 
ditions — that he has not had adequate opportunity to secure himself 
against injury or loss, and that he is not interfered with as being 
knowingly in antagonism to the public welfare — the highest 
principles might compel us to proffer compensation. There are 
many such cases in which, I think, a right state of society would 
cheerfully afford help which the individual could not claim, and 
any claim to which would certainly not be listened to. But clearly 
no such moral principle could have any force where the individual 
has had ample opportunity to protect himself, or where he is inter- 
fered with in an illegitimate course, i.e., one opposed to the public 
interests. And here it is important to notice that in reasoning 
from this higher moral ground no occupation can ever be legitimate 
that is opposed to the public good. No law can ever make it so ; 
and all the talk about a legitimate calling or business is, on this 
ground, quite beside the mark. When we are pretending to stand 
on high moral grounds, to talk about an honourable calling, a 
legitimate business, which is ruinous to public morality, is to talk 
nonsense. If, then, the publican could show that he had not had 
the opportunity of protecting himself from loss, and that the trade 
carried on under the licence had not been a public injury, I should 
admit that so far we might feel bound to give the compensation, 
which, however, he could not claim. But how is it possible that 
he should establish either of these conditions, since, as we have seen, 
he had forty years' warning, and since overwhelming testimonies 
declare his trade utterly pernicious, of which testimonials he is not 
and cannot be ignorant ? Now it is not an advantage, and therefore 
not commended by any moral principle, that private personal duty 
(to take warning) should be interfered with through public charity; 
and it is an immense wrong, by any action whatever, to put a 
premium on conduct that is prejudicial to the welfare of the com- 
munity. 

" That is one view. But there is another, as we have seen from 
the question. Who should compensate? The suggestion which has 
been made, that the trade should compensate its exiled members, 
has everything in its favour, and should, as it probably will, secure 
consideration ; but that is hardly the compensation that is asked for. 

" Or, again, if it were possible for those who consider that they 



APPENDIX. 495 

have received benefit from the publican, and are therefore under 
some obligation to him, it might be well enough that they, in dis- 
pensing with his services, should give some compensation. But it 
is to be feared it would be but small. But certainly not that the 
public should — more than half of whom repudiate his services, and 
consider themselves grievously injured by it. To take their money 
to compensate the publican is a far more immoral act than to with- 
hold from the publican that to which he never really had any 
right. Looking at things from the higher moral teachings, there is 
nothing for which men may be so severely condemned as the reck- 
less use of public money. But all use of it is such which leaves 
out of consideration the object for which, and the true interests of 
the parties from whom, it was raised. When, then, we bring 
together the injury inflicted on adjacent property by granting the 
licence, the injury inflicted on the public by the exercise of the 
licence, and that all the gains made under the licence are made at 
the expense of the public, there is not a single moral principle that 
would not pronounce it an enormous crime against the public to 
take public money to compensate the trade for being hindered from 
continuing this prodigious depredation on public property. Nor do 
I think that any one dispassionately looking into these definite 
points could well come to any other conclusion — a conclusion not 
generally reached only because few people will take the trouble to 
examine with care the ground on which they stand. 

" IV. Here 1 might close the argument, but that some might 
think I ought to take more notice of the two points, neither of 
which, however, form an essential part of the argument, of policy 
and precedent. To the question whether it might be politic, though 
not just, to give the compensation in question, I should reply that 
there may be cases in which a wise policy takes even higher ground 
than that of exact or abstract justice.; but in no case, especially 
where the public is concerned, can it violate the principles of justice, 
as it undoubtedly would in this case. 

" As to precedents, I am not aware of any in favour of com- 
pensation except that one often referred to, of slavery in the West 
Indies. But the force of that, as an example for this, completely 
fails, inasmuch as there compensation was given for property 
actually taken away or destroyed as property — the slaves. There 
is nothing of the kind here. Nor is it in the least likely that that 
experiment of the £20,000 would be so much as suggested by any 
one in this day ; an experiment signally reversed in the case of the 
Southern States of America. The crime of slave-holding is better 
understood to-day. But, on the other hand, the precedents against 
compensation are simply innumerable and overwhelming. I have 
already referred to the number of cases in which the trade is sup- 
pressed, without any thought of compensation — Sunday closing. 
Constant changes in trade destroy the livings of thousands upon 



496 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

thousands, who never get a penny of compensation. Railways shut 
up hosts of roadside houses, destroy the property of coach proprietors 
and drivers. Nuisances of all sorts are suppressed with great loss 
to those who profited by them. Personal inconveniences are con- 
stantly inflicted on individuals where the public good requires it — 
far too numerous even to name — compensation in no case being 
allowed. ■ That the principle is as well established as any known 
law, an exceptional departure from it being asked only for this 
beneficent trade. 

" And now to sum up our case for the jury. They would be 
asked for a verdict on these points : — • 

" Can the trade establish any valid right, on any ground, natural, 
legal, or moral, for the enjoyment of a monopoly privilege, of great 
commercial value, to the unlimited injury of the public ? 

" Is any right violated or wrong done by revoking this privilege, 
on the ground of this injury? 

" Can any claim for compensation exist where no right is violated 
and no wrong done? 

" On each point the verdict would be given, without further 
consideration, against the plaintiff. 

" The whole history of this melancholy question of alcohol, 
written not by me, but by others who could not falsify, in deepest 
black or intensest scarlet, suggests a different solution of the problem. 
If the trade generally — following the example of an extremely 
minute fraction of it — listening to the reiterated condemnation of 
the highest unimpeachable judges — looking on the horrible deeds 
done — could rise slightly above that contemptible measure of things, 
money value — contemptible when put in the scales against physical 
health, prolonged life, uncorrupted character, pure hearts, strong 
minds, peaceful homes, honour in the Government, integrity in the 
people — it might appear not so very great an act of self-sacrifice to 
say : For the world's good we will voluntarily renounce the gains 
that have never seemed to us perfectly clean. And whether or not 
compensation came in the shape of money, it would have a ten 
times better justification than it has now, while it would assuredly 
come in the shape of respectful admiration of a deed well done, and 
the still better form of a sense of living and working for the world's 
progress, instead of its deterioration. But if these have little or no 
weight, there remains but the single alternative — that what is not 
voluntarily surrendered will, sooner or later, cease at the stern 
command of social, mental, moral necessity ; as some one, able to 
form a judgment, has said to mankind — 'If you will not destroy 
the liquor traffic, it will destroy you.' Every principle of human 
nature and of the right constitution of things must alter, or every 
day that more reveals that startling but iuevitable fact puts com- 
pensation (to the destroyer of humanity) still lower down among 
the thincrs never to be thought of." 



APPENDIX. 497 

[The foregoing paper was read at a Conference of Temperance 
Workers, held in the Temperance Hall, Albert Street, Auckland, 
New Zealand, on Friday, February 10, 1882, and is published by 
the Auckland Total Abstinence Society, in compliance with resolu- 
tion passed at Conference,] 



2k 



PKEFACE TO BIBLIOGEAPHY. 



In researches for the foregoing work the want of a bibliography on 
the drink question was very much felt, the only attempts at such 
worth mentioning — so far as I could ascertain within the short 
time at my command — being Dr. Joseph Frank's Praxeos Medicines, 
Leipsise, 1818; Prof. Gustav Friedrich Klemm's Allegemeine 
CulturwissenscTiaft (11 B.), Leipzig; 1855, Eaige-Delorme et 
Dechambre's Dictionnaire Encycloj)edique des Sciences Medicates 
(tome ii.), Paris, 1865 ; and the Index-Catalogue of the library of 
the Surgeon-general's ofSce, U.S. Army (vol i.), Washington, 1880. 
But these are very inadequate, and therefore I hope that the follow- 
ing bibliography — consisting almost wholly of works which I have 
examined in preparing my book — though neither exhaustive nor 
critical, may do something to assist future researches on this great 
question. 

The great bulk of the writings are of a scientific character, 
though many dealing with the historical, political, social, and 
religious aspects of the question have been included. A few 
allegories have been entered ; but works of fiction, as well as special 
writings on the manufacture and adulteration of alcoholic drinks, 
have been as a rule excluded. 

For the convenience of the reader, the works have been arranged 
according to countries, thus : — Grreat Britain and the Colonies, the 
United States, Germany and France ; the smaller countries in 
alphabetical order, except Mexico. The works under each country 
have been placed chronologically, with the authors' names under 
each year, alphabetically. This rule has been followed strictly 
except in cases where more than one work of an author is included, 
when all his works are grouped under the earliest one ; and, in order 
to make it as easy to find any such work as if it were placed 



500 



THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



chronologically, I liave prefixed to the bibliography a list of the 
names (occurring under the head of Great Britain, etc.) of writers 
having more than one work inserted, with the year of the first, 
under which all the rest of the same author will be found. 

As regards Great Britain and the Colonies, I have endeavoured 
to give as complete a list as possible, in the time at my disposal, of 
works appearing previous to 1870. Since then their number is 
legion, and some selection was indispensable. For brevity's sake, 
titles have been shortened, and writers have been distinguished 
simply by Rev. if clerical, by Dr. if medical, and by Sir when 
knighted. Now and then a Prof, has been used, and specially 
characteristic or well-known titles, as in the case of Archdeacon 
Jeffries. 

Current temperance literature, i.e., newspapers and journals, have 
been omitted, except when there have been some special reasons for 
their insertiou. A large number of works for which no date could 
be found have been excluded. Many are not in the British 
Museum, but those which are there have been titled according to 
its catalogue. In the preparation of the bibliography I have been 
most kindly assisted by Mr. Garnett and Mr. Eccles, of the 
British Museum ; and by Mr. T. H. Evans, at the National Temper- 
ance League publication depot; but for valuable and constant 
services, much beyond what I could justly claim because of his 
position, I am indebted to Mr. John P. Anderson, assistant librarian, 
of the British Museum. 



Authors of more than one work. 

Anstie, Dr. Francis 
Armstrong, Dr. John 
Baker, Rev. W. E. ... 
Beddoes, Dr. Thomas 
Biggs, Thomas 
Binz, Prof. Carl 
Blacke, Dr. A. 
Browne, Rev. Peter 
Buckingham, J. Silk 
Burne, Peter ... 
Burns, Rev. Dawson 
Carpenter, Dr. William 
Cheyne, Dr. George 
Couling, Samuel 
Cruikshank, William 
Dearden, Joseph 
Denman, James L. 



Year of first work 


1862 




1744 




.. 1838 




1793 




.. 1849 




1873 




.. 1823 




1713 




.. 1834 




1847 




.. 1840 




1847 




.. 1725 




1862 




.. 1847 




1840 


... 


.. 1865 



PREFACE TO BIBLIOGRAPHY. 501 

Authors of more than one work. Year of first work. 

Dunlop, John ... ... ... ... 1828 

Edgar, Rev. John ... ... ... 1829 

Edmunds, Dr. James ... ... ... 1867 

ElHson, Rev. H. J. ... ... ... 1869 

Evans, T.H. ... ... ... ... 1882 

Forbes, Sir John ... ... ... 1847 

French, Rev. R. V. ... ... ... 1877 

Garrod, Dr. Alfred Baring ... ... 1859 

Gilmore, Rev. A. ... ... ... ... 1841 

Green, Samuel ... ... ... 1848 

Guthrie, Rev. Thomas ... ... ... 1850 

Hales, Rev. Stephen ... ... ... 1734 

Hall, Dr. Newman ... ... ... ... 1844 

Henry, Rev. William ... ... ... 1761 

Higginbottom, Dr. John ... ... ... 1842 

Hoyle, William ... ... ... 1864 

Inwards, Jabez ... ... ... ... 1849 

Jeffries, Archdeacon ... ... ... 1840 

J. H. ... ... ... ... ... 1829 

Kerr, Dr. Norman ... ... ... 1876 

Kirk, Rev. John ... ... ... ... 1862 

Kirton, J. W. ... ... ... ... 1865 

Lees, Dr. F. R. ... ... ... ... 1841 

Lewis, David ... ... ... ... 1859 

Livesey, Joseph ... ... ... ... 1832 

Logan, William ... ... ... 1849 

Lucas, Dr. Thomas P. .., ... ... 1874 

Lush, W. J. H. ... ... ... 1873 

Marcet, Dr. William ... ... ... 1860 

Miller, Dr. James ... ... ... 1857 

Montagu, Dr. Basil... ... ... ... 1814 

Mudge, Dr. Henry ... •... ... 1848 

Munroe, Dr. Henry ... ... ... 1865 

Ogston, Dr. F. ... ... ... 1883 

Parkes, Dr. Edmund A. ... ... ... 1870 

Physician, By a ... ... ... 1829 

Prichard, Dr. James Cowles ... ... ... 1835 

Reade, Arthur A. ... ... ... 1883 

Reid, Rev. William ... ... ... 1850 

Richardson, Dr. B. W. ... ... ... 1875 

Ridge, Dr. J. J. «... ... ... ... 1879 

Richie, Rev. Wilham ... ... ... 1855 

Russom, J. ... ... ... ... 1849 

Sherlock, Frederick ... ... ... 1879 

Short, Dr. Thomas ... ... ... ... 1750 

Smith, Dr. Edward ... ... ... 1860 

Taylor, John ... ... ... ... 1635 

Tryon, Thomas ... ... ... 1682 

Wightman, Mrs. ... ••• ... ... 1860 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 



GREAT BRITAm AND COLONIES. 

Turner, Dr. William, A new Boke of the Properties of all Wines. 
1568. 

Stuhhes, Fhilip, The Anatomies of Abuse. 1583. 

Ullmus, John Francis, Be Ebrietate Fugienda. 1589. 

Nash, Thomas, Summer's Last Will and Testament. A Drama 
performed before Queen Elizabeth. (Temperance Worker, 
vol. 13, p. 99.) London, 1592. 

FouTface, William (pseud.), Bacchus Bountie ; describing the 
debonaire deitie of his bountiful Godhead in the royall obser- 
vance of his great Feast of Penticost. (Harleian Miscellany, 
vol. 2, 1744.) 1594. 

Thompson, Thomas, Diet for a Drunkard. London, 1612. 

Bownaone, John, Foure treatises tending to disswade all Christians 
from . . . Swearing, Drunkenness, etc. London, 1613. 

Brathwaite, E., A Solemne Joviall Disputation, Theoreticke and 
Practicke, briefely shadowing the Law of Drinking, etc. 
CEnogythopolis, At the Signe of the Eed Eyes. 1617. 

Young, Thomas, England's Bane. London, 1617. 

Horriby, William, The Scourge of Drunkenness. London, 1619. 

Burton, Fohert, Anatomy of Melancholy. Oxford, 1621, 

Bent, Baniel, A Sermon against Drunkenness. Cambridge, 1628. 

Gallohelgicus (pseud.), Wine, Beere, and Ale together by the Eares, 
a Dialogue, etc. London, 1629. 

Harris, Rev. Bohert, The Drunkard's Cup. (A sermon on Isaiah, 
chap. V. 11-18.) London, 1630. 

Randolph, Thomas, Aristippus, a Play so called. With a Dialogue 
between Wine, Ale, Beere, and Tobacco, by another hand. 
London, 1632. 

Heywood, Thomas, Philocothonista, or the Drunkard, opened, dis- 
sected, and anatomized. London, 1635. 



504 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Taylor, John (the water-poet), The old, old, very old man ; or, 
" the age " and long life of Thomas Parr. London, 1635. 

, Drinke and Welcome ; or, the famous Historie of the most 

part of Ddnkes in use. 1637. 

■ , Ale Ale-vated into the Ale-titude ; or, Al-earned oration 

before a civil assembly of Ale-drinkers, etc. London, 16'51. 

Speagle, E. van {pseud.), Drink and Welcome. London, 1637. 

Wliitaker, Br. Tobias, The Tree of human life ; or, the bloud of the 
Grape. London, 1638. 

Mulled-Sack. The Times Abuses ; or, Mulled-Sacke his grievance, 
etc. London, 1640. 

A Cup of Sack. London, 1644. 

Brewer's Plea, The ; or, a Vindication of Strong Beer and Ale, wherein 
is declared the wonderful bounty and patience of Grod; the 
wicked and monstrous unthankfulness of man ; the unregarded 
injuries done to these creatures, groaning as it were to be 
delivered from the abuses proceeding from disdainful aspersions 
of ignorant, and from the intemperance of sinful man. London, 
1647. 

Geree, JRev. John, QeKpapfiaKov. A divine potion to preserve spirituall 
health, by the cure of unnaturall health-drinking. Written 
for the satisfaction and published by the direction of a godly 
parhament man. London, 1648. 

Looking-glasse for a Drunkard. London, 1652. 

Bighy, Joseph, An ingenious poem called the drunkard's prospective 
or Burning-Grlasse. London, 1656. 

Yonge, B., The Blemish of the Government, the Shame of Eeligion, 
the Disgrace of Mankind ; or, a charge drawn up against 
drunkards and presented to His Highiiess the Lord Protector, in 
the name of all the Sober Party in the three nations, etc. 
London, 1658. 

Prynne, Wm., The odious sin of drinking healths, with a brief of 
Mr. Pryn's solid arguments against it. London, 1660. 

Jones, Andrew, The dreadtul character of a drunkard ; or, the most 
odious and beastly sin of drunkenness described and condemned. 
London, 1663. 

Bighy, Sir Kenelm, Eeceipts of surgery and physick, also of 
cordial and distilled waters and spirits. London, 1665. 

Charleton, Br. Walter, A discourse of the various sicknesses of 
wines. London, 1668. 

Faber, A. 0., Some kindling sparks in matters of physick. London, 
1668. 

Frinus, B., A new and needful treatise of spirits and wine 
offending man's body. London, 1668. 

Bury, Edward, England's Bane ; or, the deadly danger of drunken- 
ness. London, 1677. 

FIscholt, J. S., The Curious Distillatory ; or, the Art of Distilling 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 505 

Coloured Liquors, Spirits, Oils, etc., from Vegetables, Animals, 

Minerals, and Metals, a thing hitherto known to few. London, 

1677. 
Tem'ple, Sir William, Miscellanea, Part I. An Essay upon the 

cure of gout by moxa. London, 1677. 
Bussel, Richard, The Works of Greber (Jabeer ibn Hayyan), the 

most famous Arabian prince and philosopher. London, 

1678. 
A Warning Piece to the slothful, idle, careless, drunken, etc. 

London, 1678. 
Darby, C, Bacchanalia ; or, a description of a drunken club. 

London, 1680. 
Jole, William, A warning to drunkards. London, 1680. 
Tryon, Thomas, A treatise of cleanliness in meats and drinks, of 

the preparation of food. London, 1682. 
, Health's grand preservative ; or, the Woman's best doctor. A 

treatise showing the nature of brandy and other distilled 

spirits, etc. London, 1682. 

Physiologus Fhilofheos), The way to make all people 

rich ; or, Wisdom's ball to Temperance and Frugality. London, 

1685. 

, A new method of educating children. London, 1695. 

, Wisdom's dictates ; or, aphorisms and rules ... for pre- 
serving the health of the body. London, 1696. 

, The way to save wealth. London, 1697. 

, The way to health, long life, and happiness, or a discourse 

of temperance and the . . . things requisite for the life of 

man. London, 1697. 
, Letters upon, several occasions. (Letter 37, Of Fermentation.) 

London, 1700. 
Ward, Rev. Samuel, A warning-piece- to all drunkards and health- 
drinkers, faithfully collected from the works of Mr. S. W. 

1682. 
Maynwaring, Everard, The method and means of enjoying health, 

vigour, and long life. London, 1683. 
Tlie great evil of health-drinking. 1684. 
M. G. {Qent.), the Praise of Yorkshire Ale, wherein is enumerated 

several sorts of drink, with a description of the humours of 

most sorts of drunkards. York^ 1685. 
Scrivener, Matthew, A Treatise against drunkenesse, etc. London, 

1685. 
Olauber, J. R., The Works of, containing great variety of choice 

Secrets in medicine and alchymy, in the working of metallick 

mines, and the separation of metals, also cheap and easy ways 

of making saltpetre, and improving of barren laud, and the 

fruits of the earth, etc. 1689. 
A Dialogue between Claret and Derby-ale. London, 1692. 



506 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Drinking — Fatal Friendship; or, the drunkard's misery, being a 
satyr against hard drinking, by the author of the search after 
claret. (A Poem.) 1692. 

Ames, JR., Bacchanalian sessions ; or, the contention, of liquors. 
London, 1693. 

Hartman, G., The true preserver and restorer of health, with ex- 
cellent directions for cooking, preserving, conserving, making 
metheglin, etc., with a description of an engine for dressing 
meat, distilling cordial waters, etc. 1695. 

Baynard, Dr. Edward, Biographical notices of water-drinkers. 1706. 

Baymand, Dr. Ediuard, Discourse on longevity. 1706. 

Anon., A Dissuasive from the sin of drunkenness, by a member of 
the Church of England. London, 1711. 

Browne, Bev. Beter, On drinking in remembrance of the dead. (A 
Sermon.) 1713. 

, A Discourse of drinking healths, wherein the great evil of 

this prevailing custom is shewn, etc. 1716. 

Boulton, Bichard, Physico-Chyrurgical treatises of the gout, the 
king's evil, etc. London, 1714. 

OinojpJiilus Boniface de Monte Fiascone (pseud.), Ebrietatis Enco- 
mium ; or, the praise of drunkenness, etc. : a translation of the 
Eloge de I'yvresse of A. H. de Sallengre. London, 1723. 

Smith, John, The curiosities of common water. London, 1723. 

Anon., A letter to George Cheyne . . . occasioned by his essay on 
health and long life. London, 1724. 

Cheyne, Dr. George, An essay on health and long life. London, 
1725. 

, An Essay on the nature and methods of treating the gout. 

London, 1737. 

_, The Natural Method of curing the diseases of the body, and 

the disorders of the mind depending on the body. London, 
1742. 

Sedgwick, James, A new treatise on liquors, wherein the use and 
abuse of wine, malt drinks, water, etc., are particularly con- 
sidered. London, 1725. 

Disney, Bev. John, A view of ancient laws, against immorality 
and profaneness. (Laws against drunkenness, pp. 257-271.) 
Cambridge, 1729. 

Braithwaite, George, The nation's reproach and the Church's grief; 
or, a serious and needful word of advice to those who needlessly 
frequent taverns and publick houses, etc. London, 17^3. 

Hales, Bev. Stephen, Friendly admonition to the drinkers of 
brandy, and other distilled spirituous liquors. London, 1734. 

, On Ventilators, vol. ii. London, 1740. 

, On the unwholesomeness and destructiveness of fermented, 

distilled, and spirituous liquors. London, 1750. 

Johnson's Debates. London, 1742. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 507 

James, Dr. B., Pharmacopoeia Universalis. London, 1743. 
Armstrong, Dr. John, The art of preserving health. London, 1744. 
, On the brain fever following intoxication. {Edinburgh 

Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. i. pp. 1, 58, 146.) 1813. 
Millies, Dr. S., Medical essays and observations, abridged from 

the philosophical transactions. (Standard Temperance Library, 

London, 1843.) London, 1745. 
Smith, George, The Art of Distilling. 1749. 
Eolleston, S., Olvos KpL?>Lvos. A dissertation concerning the origin 

and antiquity of barley wine. Oxford, 1750. 
Short, Dr. Thomas, A discourse on tea, sugar, milk, made-wines, 

spirits, punch, tobacco, etc. London, 1750. 
, a Greneral Treatise on various cold mineral waters in England. 

Sheffield, 1765. 
Burgh, James, A warning to dram drinkers. 1751. 
Baalzehuh (pseud.), An oration delivered before an audience of 

distillers. London, 1760. 
Wesley, Bev. John, The use of money. London, 1760. 
Henry, Bev. William, Earnest Addresses to the people against 

drinking spirituous liquors. Dublin, 1761. 
, A New Year's gift to dram drinkers, being an earnest address 

to them from the late Eev, Stephen Hales. Dublin, 1762. 
Dossie, Bohert, An essay on spirituous liquors with regard to their 

effects on health, etc. London, 1770. 
Harwood, Bev. Edward, Of temperance and intemperance, their 

effects on the body and the mind, etc. London, 1774. 
Barry, Sir Edward, Bart., Observations, historical, critical, and 

medical, on the wines of the ancients, and the analogy 

between them and modern wines, etc. London, 1775. 
Eemingston, John Leedes, Observation on the medical practice of 

Dr. John Brown ; or, an inquiry into the abuse of stimulants in 

fevers. Ipswich, 1788. 
Trotter, Dr. Thomas, De Ebrietate ejusque Effectibus in Corpus 

humanum. Edinburgh, 1788. 
, An essay ... on drunkenness and its effects on the human 

body. London, 1804. 
Lettsom, John Coaldey, History of some of the effects of hard 

drinking. London, 1789. 
Bell, Dr. John, Observations on the mode of action of spirituous 

liquors on the human body ; or, the use of malt liquors, etc. 

London, 1791. 
Beddoes, Dr. Thomas, A Guide for self-preservation and parental 

affection. Bristol, 1793. 
, A Lecture Introductory to a course of popular instruction on 

the constitution and management of the human body. Bristol, 

1797. ^ 
, Hygeia ; or, essays moral and medical on the causes affecting 



508 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

the personal estate of our middling and affluent classes. 

Bristol, 1802-1803. 
Beddoes, Dr. Thomas^ Good advice for the husbandman in harvest. 

Bristol, 1808. 
Crumpe, Dr. Samuel, Essay on the best means for providing 

employment for the people. 1793. 
Dariuin, Dr. Erasmus, Zoonomia. (Section xxi. of drunkenness.) 

London, 1794. 
Wright, J., Essay on wines, etc. London, 1795. 
An earnest and affectionate address to the poor, against drunken- 
ness. (A minister to his parishioners.) London, 1796. 
Garnett, Dr. Thomas^ A Lecture on the preservation of health. 

London, 1797. 
, Popular lectures on zoonomia ; or, laws of animal life. 

London, 1804. 
Child, Samuel (Brewer), The Art and mystery of brewing porter, 

ale, etc. London, 1798. 
Woodward, Dr. Josiah, A dissuasive from the sin of drunkenness. 

London, 1798. 
Young, Arthur, Inquiry into the state of the public mind amongst 

the lower classes. Dublin, 1798. 
Sand/ord, Dr. William, A few practical remarks on the medicinal 

effects of wine and spirits. Worcester, 1799. 
Eeligious Tracts dispersed by the Society for Promoting Christian 

Knowledge. (Vol. ii.) London, 1800. 
Bohson, Dr. W., De effectibus vini et spiritus ardentis in corpus 

humanum. Edinburgh, 1803. 
Playfair, William, An Inquiry into the permanent causes of the 

decline and fall of powerful and wealthy nations, etc. London, 

1805. 
Pinherton, John, EecoUections of Paris in 1802-1805. London, 1806. 
D' Israeli, Isaac, Curiosities of Literature. London, 1807. 
Pigot, J. M. B., Dissertatio . . . de morbis ebriosorum quasdam 

complectens. Edinburgi, 1807. 
Luard, P. F., De quibusdam ebriosorum morbis. Edinburgi, 1808. 
Carlysle, Dr. A. (afterward written Carlisle, Sir Anthony), On the 

pernicious effects of fermented and spirituous liquors as a part 

of human diet. London, 1810. 

, An essay on the disorders of old age, etc. London, 1817. 

, Moral influence of fermented liquors. 1837. 

Brodie, Dr. B. C, Experiments and observations on the different 

modes in which death is produced by certain vegetable 

poisons. (Experiments with Alcohol. In Phil. Transact, of 

the Eoyal Society. C. L, p. 176.) London, 1811. Eepublished 

in 1851 under the title of Physiological Besearches. 
That brandy, rum, etc., be prohibited. Parliamentary proposals, 

1673. Harleian Miscellany (vol. viii. p. 559). London, 1811. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 509 

Forsfer, Dr. Thomas, Physiological reflexions on the destructive 

operation of spirituous and fermented liquors on the animal 

system. London, 1812. 
The Praise of Drunkenness. (Anon.) 1812. 
Brand, W. T., Eemarks on the state in which alcohol exists in 

fermented liquors. (Phil. Transact.) London, 1813. 
Henderson, G., De effectibus alkohol. Edinburgi, 1813. 
Pearson, S. B., Observations on brain fever following intoxication. 

Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal (vol. ix. p. 326. 

Essay first published in 1801). 1813. 
Sutton, Dr. Thomas, Tracts on delirium tremens, etc. London, 

1813. 
Duhue, M., On Alcohol or Spirituous Liquors. (Phil. Mag., xliii.) 

London, 1814. 
Montagu, Dr. Basil, Essay on fermented liquors, by a water- 
drinker. London, 1814. 
, Some enquiries into the effects of fermented liquors. 

London, 1818. 
Bidvjell, A Case of delirium tremens. {London Medical Report.) 

London, 1815. 
Ouvaroff, Essay on the mysteries of Eleusis, translated by J. D. 

Price, with observations by J. Christie. 1817. 
Bees Cyclopaedia. (Articles on alcohol and drunkenness.) 

London, 1819. 
Accum, Friedrich Christian A. (Chemist), A treatise on adultera- 
tions of food and culinary poisons, exhibiting the fraudulent 

sophistications of spirituous liquors. London, 1820. 
Burrowe's Modern Encyclopcedia (vol. iii., Art. Chemistry ... of 

alcohol, p. 253.) London. [1820.] 
Cohhett, William, Political Register. (Chap, on councils to young 

men.) London, 1820. 
Begie, Jac, Diss, de delirio trem. Edinburgh, 1821. 
Blache, Dr. A., A Paper on delirium ebriositatis. {Edinburgh 

Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xix. p. 497.) Edinburgh, 

1823. 
, A practical essay on the disease generally known under the 

denomination of Delirium Tremens. London, 1830. 
Henderson, A., Tlie History of ancient and modern wines. 

London, 1824. 
Good, Dr. John Mason, The study of medicine. London, 1825. 
Paris, Dr. John Ayrton, A treatise on diet, etc. London, 1826. 
Macnish, Dr. Robert, The anatomy of drunkenness. Glasgow, 1827. 
Brown, Dr., Hereditary tendency to insanity. London, 1828. 
Burrows, George Man, Commentaries on the causes, forms, 

symptoms, and treatment of insanity. London, 1828. 
Davy, Sir Humphry, Salnionia. London, 1828. 
Dunlop, John, Extent and remedy of national intemperance. 1828. 



510 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Dunlop, John, An essay on the wine system of Great Britain. 

Greenock, 1831. 
, The Philosophy of artificial and compulsory drinking usages 

in Great Britain and Ireland. London, 1839. 
, The Temperance Emigrants : a drama descriptive of the 

difficulties and discouragements incident to temperance 

societies and general temperance life. London, 1842. 
Wine and spirit adulterations unmasked. London, 1828. 
Christison, Sir Bohert, A treatise on poisons in relation to medical 

jurisprudence, etc. London, 1829. 
, On some of the medico-legal relations of the habit of in- 
temperance. Edinburgh, 1861. 
Edgar, Rev. John, An Address to the temperate. Dublin, 1829. 

, '^i'he intoxicating drinks of the Hebrews. Belfast, 1837. 

, Scriptural Temperance. Belfast, 1837. 

U. J., The political evils of intemperance. Dublin, 1829. 

, Some observations and advice addressed to the mechanic 

and industrious classes on the use of ardent spirits. Dublin, 

1830. 
, The Test ; or, falsehood and ignorance exposed, an answer 

to teetotalism, examined and rejected. London, 1839. 
Physician, By a (Dr. John Cheyne), A statement of certain effects 

to be apprehended from temperance societies. Dublin, 1829. 

, A letter on the effects of wine and spirits. Dublin, 1829. 

, Propositions submitted to the consideration of the opponents 

of temperance societies. Dublin, 1830. 
, A second letter on the effects of wine and spirits. Dublin, 

1830. 
W. U., Kemarks on the evils, occasions, and cure of intemperance. 

Dublin, 1829. 
Beaumont, Br. Thomas, A lecture on the nature, uses, and effects 

of ardent spirits. (Delivered at Bradford, December, 1830.) 

1830. 
, Essay on the nature and properties of alcoholic drinks. 

Bradford, 1830. 
Anon., A Letter to a member of the Dublin Temperance Society on 

the supposed value of ardent spirits, in relation to national 

wealth, government revenue, rent and agricultural profits. 

Dublin, 1830. 
Conolly, Dr. John, An Inquiry concerning the indications of 

insanity. London, 1830. 
Donovan, History of intoxicating liquors. (In Domestic Economy, 

vol. i.) 1830. 
Glasgow and West of Scotland Temperance Society Eeport, 

1830-1831. 
Hill, Bev. John, Seven discourses containing friendly warnings 

against drunkenness. Huntly, 1831. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 511 

Stuart, Rev. Moses, An essay upon the wines and stron^j drinks 
of the ancient Hebrews, etc. (Reprinted from the American 
edition, with a preface by Kev. Dr. John Pye Smith.) 
London, 1831. 

Brewster, Rev. James, The evils of drunkenness and the principles 
of temperance societies (Scotland). 1832. 

Livesey, Joseph, Lecture on malt liquor. Preston, 1832. 

, Eeminiscences of early teetotalism. Preston, 1867. 

, Autobiography. Preston, 1868. 

Ogston, Dr. F., Phenomena of the more advanced stage of intoxi- 
cation, with cases and dissections. (Edinburgh Medical and 
Surgical Journal, vol. xi. p. 276.) 1833. 

, Pathological observations on the bodies of known drunkards. 

(British and Foreign Medico- Chirurg leal Review, April, 1834.) 

Buckingham, J. Silk, Evidence on drunkenness presented to the 
House of Commons. London, 1834. 

, National evils and practical remedies^ with the plan of a 

model town. London, 1849. 

, An earnest plea for the reign of temperance and peace. 

London, 1851. 

, History and progress of the temperance reformation in 

Grreat Britain and other countries of the globe, also a plea for 
the Maine Law. London, 1854. 

Autobiography of J. S. Buckingham. London. [1855]. 

Greville, Robert K., Facts illustrative of the drunkenness of Scotland. 
Edinburgh, 1834. 

Pye-Smith, Rev. John, On the habitual use of alcoholic beverages. 
1834. 

Bruce, Edgar, Digest of evidence before the Committee of Parlia- 
ment on the extent, causes, and consequences of drunkenness. 
London, 1835. 

Prichard, Br. James Coiules, Treatise on insanity and other dis- 
orders affecting the mind. London, 1835. 

, On different forms of insanity. London, 1842. 

, The total abstainer defended. London, 1845. 

Swig, Sal, The oration of S. S. in defense of drunkenness. Dublin, 
1835. 

Junius, An essay on the nature and properties of porter. London, 
1836. 

Redding, Cyrus, History and description of modern wines. 
London, 1836. 

Clark, James, A Manual of the New British and Foreign Temperance 
Society. . . . nature of intoxicating liquors ; opinions of 
medical men. . . . difficulties and objections considered, etc., 
etc. London, 1837. 
Greenwood, E., Lectures on the causes, effects, and extent of 
intemperance. London, 1837, 



512 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Klein, Magnus (of Berlin), A brief narrative of his life, written by 

himself. London, 1837. 
Anon., Historical anecdotes dedicated to temperance societies. By 

a Durham clergyman. London, 1837. 
Andersen, Peter, Thoughts on drink. Edinburgh, 1838. 
Baker, Rev. W. R., The Curse of Britain, essay on the evils, causes, 

and cure of intemperance. London, 1838. 
, an easy catechism or first manual for little teetotallers. 

London, 1838. 
, Useful facts for the drinkers, sellers, and makers of malt 

liquors. London, 1838. 
, Intemperance, the idolatry of Great Britain. London. 

[1851.] 
Booth, George, The Palace of Gin ; a serio-comic dramatic poem in 

two acts.. London, 1838. 
CoUinson, Rev. J., Fables, dedicated to temperance societies. 

London, 1838. 
Davis, H. H., The tee-totaller's album, etc. Carlisle, 1838. 
Dewhurst, Dr. W. H., A popular lecture on the physiology of 

drunkenness, etc. London, 1838. 
Morewood, Samuel, A philosophical and statistical history of the 

inventions, etc., of inebriating liquors. Dublin, 1838. 
Sherman, Rev. J., The claims of our neighbour. London, 1838. 
Stokes, Rev. George, A temperance catechism, etc. Liverpool, 1838. 
Beardsall, Rev. F., A Treatise on the nature, properties, and 

composition of ancient and modern wines. London, 1839. 
Christison, Dr., On granular degeneration of the kidneys. Edin- 
burgh, 1839. 
Grindrod, Dr. Ralph Barnes, Bacchus. (Prize Essay.) London, 

1839. 
Levison, Dr. J. L., Lecture on the hereditary tendency of drunken- 
ness. London, 1839. 
Marshall, Thomas, Aquarius; or, the history of drunkenness. 

Berwick, 1839. 
Parsons, Rev. B., Anti-Bacchus. Essay on intoxicating drinks. 

London, 1839. 
, The Wine Question settled in accordance with the inductions 

of science and the facts of history. London, 1841. 
Percy, Dr. John, An experimental inquiry concerning the presence 

of alcohol in the ventricles of the brain, etc. Nottingham, 1839. 
Birmingham, Rev. James, Memoir of the Very Rev. Theobald 

Matthew, with an account of the rise and progress of temper- 
ance in Ireland. 1840. 
Blake, A., On Delirium Tremens. London, 1840. 
Burns, Rev. Dawson, A plea for youths' temperance societies. 

London, 1840. 
J Drink, drunkenness, and the drink traffic. Leeds, 1862. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 513 

Burns, Bev. Bawson, The basis of temperance reform. London, 

1872. 

, Christendom and the drink curse. London, 1875. 

, The Temperance treasury and dictionary of persons, dates, 

customs, events, productions, laws, etc., associated with 

intoxicating liquors and the temperance reformation. See 

Temperance Worker, 1873-1883. 
Cruikshank, William, Grod glorified by teetotalism. London, 1840. 
Bearden, Joseph, A brief history of ancient and modern teetotalism, 

with a short account of drunkenness and the various means 

used for its suppression. Preston, 1840. 
, Forty Years Ago, or the dawn and spread of teetotalism. 

1873. 
Bemocritus, An analysis, scientific, moral, and scriptural, of the 

nature ... of wine, ale, and alcohol. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 

1840. 
Haynes, Matthew P., An interesting account of the extraordinary 

grand teetotal galashield at Dyrham Park (August 10, 1840). 

London, 1840. 
Jeffreys, Archdeacon, The religious objection to teetotalism. 

London, 1840. 

~ , Alcoholic wines. 1845. 

J. F. M., The doctrines of total abstinence justified. 1840. 

Roof, Rev. William, The pastor's pledge of total abstinence. 

1840. 
Shrewsbury, Rev. J., Alcohol against the Bible, and the Bible 

against Alcohol. 1840. 
Thompson, Rev. B. , Scriptural union ; or. Temperance Societies 

based on Bible principles. (Four Lectures.) 1840. 
White, G., Hints moral and medical on teetotalism, gin-drinking, 

and opium-eating. London, 1840, 
Whitecross, John, Temperance anecdotes and facts ; with a selection 

of some of the principal arguments in support of temperance 

principles. Edinburgh, 1840. 
Wooler, Br. William, The philosophy of temperance and the 

physical causes of moral sadness. London, 1840. 
Anon., Facts, proving water to be the only beverage fitted to give 

health and strength to man. London, about 1840. 
Anon., Gin, the skeleton spirit and demon of depravity : a voice 

from the poison palaces, addressed to the two houses of the 

British Legislature. London, 1840. 
Anon., History of teetotalism in Devonshire. Devonport, 1841. 
Beaton, John, An address to the working classes on the advantages 

of total abstinence. 1841. 
Carvosso, Rev. B., Drunkenness the enemy of Britain. Barnstaple, 

1841. 
Combe, A., Physical and moral management of infancy. 1841. 

2l 



514 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Firtli, B., An Essay on sacramental wines. Hull, 1841. 

Gilmore, Rev. A., Sacramental Wines. London, 1841. 

, Our Drinks ; or, the nature and effects of fermented liquors. 

London, 1856. 
Lees, Dr. F. B., Standard Temperance Library ; containing valuable 

reprints from medical authors of the last three centuries. 

Douglas, 1841. 

, History of the wine question. London, 1841. . 

, The Illustrated history of alcohol. London, 1843. 

, Essays, historical and critical, on the temperance question. 

London, 1853. 
, An Argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor 

traffic. London, 1856. 
Lees, Dr. F. B., The principles of true temperance. Manchester, 

1856. 
, One hundred objections to a Maine Law ; sequel to an 

argument for the legislative prohibition of the liquor traffic. 

Manchester, 1857. 
, Discussion between Dr. F. K. Lees and Dr. H. Brown. 

Manchester, 1859. 

, Doctors, Drugs, and Drinks. London, 1866. 

, and Bev. Dawson Burns, The Temperance Bible Commentary, 

London, 1868. 

, The Text-book of temperance. London, 1871. 

, A refutation of Bishop Lincoln's extraordinary attack upon 

teetotalism. London, 1873. 

, Nephalism. Eeply to the Clerical World. London, 1883. 

, The science temperance text-book. London, 1884. 

Macdonald, Bev. G. B., An Apology for the disuse of alcoholic 

drinks. London, 1841. 
Beynolds, G. William, The anatomy of intemperance, a key to 

teetotalism. London, 1841. 
Thomson, Dr. B. Dundas, Digestion ; the influence of alcoholic 

fluids on that function. London, 1841. 
Anon., Tirosh Lo Yayin, or the wine question considered in an 

entirely novel point of view. London, 1841. 
Permanent documents of the American Temperance Society. 

London, 1841. 
Batchelor, William, Trial and persecution of a teetotal surgeon; 

with important and conclusive testimonies from eminent 

physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, proving that all curable 

diseases can be cured without the use of alcoholic fluids. 

Dunstable, 1842. 
Clinical Lecture on Delirium Tremens. {London Medical Gazette, 

vol. XXX. p. 280.) 1842. 
Hlgginbottom, Dr. John, Mothers, doctors, and nurses. Notting- 
ham, 1842. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 515 

Higginhottom, Dr. John, Obesity, paralysis, and apoplexy. Notting- 
ham, 1843. 
, On the treatment of disease without the use of alcoholic 

stimulants. (Lancet, vol. 11, p. 166.) London, 1857. 
, On the treatment of diseases without the use of alcoholic 

stimulants. (Lancet, vol. 1, p. 237.) London, 1858. 
, On the non-alcoholic treatment of disease. (British Medical 

Journal, vol. ii. pp. 274-278.) London, 1862. 
, Alcoholic rheumatism from daily imbibition of fermented 

alcoholic liquors and its remedy. (British Medical Journal, 

vol. i. p. 26). London, 1868. 
Anon., The progressive effects of drunkenness as exhibited on both. 

Enghsh and natives. Calcutta, 1842. 
ILart, M. B., Truth unfolded; or, the origin and progress of 

teetotalism in and near London. London, 1843. 
Johnson, Br. Edward, Life, health, and disease. London, 1843. 
Hall, Br. Newman, Scriptural claims of teetotalism. Hull, 

1844. 

, Words from the workshop. London, 1860. 

, Stop the leak. Hull, 1862. 

•^ , Cross-bearing. Hull, 1864. 

, Day of small things. Hull, 1865. 

, Conflict and victory. London, 1874. 

Letters in Chemistry. (First Series.) London, 1844. 

Barroiu, John H., Temperance and teetotalism ; being a candid 

inquiry into the lawfulness or unlawfulness of using distilled 

and fermented liquors. Market Drayton, 1845. 
Combe, A., Phj'siology of digestion. Edinburgh, 1845. 
Coventry, John, Teapot musings ; or, moderation versus excess ; 

a discussion over three cups of tea with the teetotal — 

other total — and health-studying public. Chelmsford, 

1845. 
Be Quincey, Thomas, The temperance movement of modern times. 

(Taifs Edinhurgh Magazine.) 1845. 
Trail, Dr. Bussel T, Philosophy of the temperance reformation. 

London, 1845. 
On the administration of intoxicating doses of alcohol in traumatic 

tetanus. (Lancet, vol. 1.) London, 1845. 
Buchle, James, The Wesleyan Centenary Hall spirit vaults 

exposed. London, 1846. 
M'Culloch, George E., Sobriety contrasted with intemperance, in a 

series of addresses. Edinburgh, 1846. 
Bage, Thomas, An earnest appeal to the nation at large on the 

mischievous effects of beer-houses. London, 1846. 
Tears, James, The origin and success of the advocacy of the 

principle of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. 

London, 1846. 



516 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Toumans, Dr. Edward, The scientific basis ' of prohibition. 

London, 1846. 
Animal Chemistry (voL xix. p. 116). London, 1846. 
The Proceedings of the World's Temperance Convention. London, 

1846. 
Burne, Peter, The teetotaler's companion, or a plea for temperance. 

London, 1847. 
, The Concordance of scripture and science, illustrated with 

reference to the temperance cause. London, 1847. 
Carpenter, Dr. William B., The physiolosical efi'ects of alcoholic 

drinks. (In the British and Foreign Medical Review, October, 

1847.) London, 1847. 
• , On the nse and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and 

disease. (Prize Essay.) London, 1850. 
, The moderate use of intoxicating drinks, physiologically 

considered. London, 1853. 
, The physiology of temperance and total abstinence. 

London, 1853. 
— — , The physiological errors of moderation. Grlasgow, 1855. 
The Alcohol-in- Grape Question, solved. London, 1847. 
Cruihshanh, George, The Bottle, in eight plates. London, 1847. 
, The drunkard's children : a sequel to the bottle, in eight 

plates. London, 1848. Reproduced by the National Temper- 
ance League in 1881. 

, The glass and the new crystal palace. London, 1853. 

Dunmow Med. Discussion on teetotalism between Dr. R. Grindrod 

and Mr. Wm. Cock and Mr. John Coventry. Dunmow, 1847 
Fortes, Sir John, Temperance and teetotalism ; an inquiry into the 

effects of alcoholic drinks on the human system in health and 

disease. London, 1847. 

, The physiological effects of alcoholic drinks. London, 1848. 

Madderi, Dr. R. H., Stimulating Drinks. London, 1847. 

Green, Samuel, The Christian aspect of teetotalism. London, 1848. 

Leech, Dr. Johi, On the use of alcoholic stimulants in fever. 

Glasgow, 1848. 
Mudge, Dr. Henry, Texts rescued from the intemperate ; or, 

teetotalism put under the protection of the gospel. Bodmin, 

1848. 
, Alcoholics : a letter to practitioners in medicine, by one of 

themselves. London, 1856. 
, Physiology, health, and disease demanding abstinence from 

alcoholic drinks and prohibition of the common sale. London , 

1859. 

, Physiology, health, and disease. London, 1860. 

■ , The nature and obligations of temperance. London, 1862. 

, Stimulants in fever. {Medical Times and Gazette, vol. 2, 

p. 630.) London, 1863. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 517 

Mudge, Dr. Henry, A Guide to the treatment of disease without 

alcoholic liquors. Bodmin, 1863. 
Beggs, Thomas, An inquir}^ into the extent and causes of juvenile 
depravity. London, 1849. 

, Dear bread and wasted grain. London, 1856. 

, A sketch of the life and labours of Mr. Alderman Guest, of 

Eotherham. London, 1881. 
Chadwick, Dr. John, An essay on the use of alcoholic liquors in 

health and disease. London, 1849, 
Dyer, John, Total abstinence examined by the light of science. 

About 1849. 
Haughton, James, The use of alcoholic liquors, economically, 

socially, and morally wrong. Dublin, 1849. 

, A plea for teetotalism and the Maine Law. About 1856. 

Horsfield, Bev. T., A plea for a change of the wine at the Lord's 

Table. London, 1849. 
Hudson, Thomas, Occasional papers on the evils of a drinking 

education. London, 1849. 
Inwards, Jahez, Essays on temperance. London, 1849. 

, Dewdrops, etc, London, 1851. 

^ , Temperance Eeminiscences ; or, glimpses of the past. About 

1856. 

, Memorials of temperance workers. London, 1879. 

Logan, William, The moral statistics of Glasgow. Glasgow, 1849. 

, The great social evil. London, 1871. 

, The early heroes of the temperance reformation. Glasgow, 

1873. 
Perfitt, P. W., Human physiology the genuine advocate of total 

abstinence from all kinds of alcoholic beverages. (^The 

Abstinence Standard.) 1849-1850. 
Bussom, J., The evil effects of beershops. (A Prize Essay.) 

London, 1849. 

, A word to the workiDg classes, etc. London, 1850, 

Spratt, Bev. John, An appeal to the people on the horrid crime of 

drunkenness. Dublin, 1849. 
Worsley, Bev. Henry, Juvenile depravity. (Prize Essay.) London, 

1849. 
Guthrie, Bev. Thomas, A plea on behalf of drunkards and against 

drunkenness. Edinburgh, 1850. 

, The city ; its sins and sorrows. Edinburgh, 1857. 

Howorth, Bev. F., Popular objections to total abstinence calmly 

examined. London, 1850. 
Hunt, Thomas P., Death by measure ; or, poisons and their effects 

found in intoxicating liquors. Edinburgh, 1850. 
Beid, Thomas, Intemperance considered in relation to its cause and 

cure; or a defence of the principle and practice of total 

abstinence. Glasgow, 185.0. 



518 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Reid, Rev. William, The evils of moderate drinking : an argu- 
ment for total abstinence. Glasgow, 1850. 

, The Temperance Cyclopsedia. Glasgow, 1851. 

, Temperance memorials of the late Eobert Kettle, Esq. 

Glasgow, 1853. 
, The Anti-Christ of England ; or, the liquor traffic viewed in 

its antagonism to humanity, civilization, and religion. 

London, 1857. 

, Our National Vice. Glasgow, 1858. 

, The Communion Wine Question ; a plea for the fruit of the 

vine. Glasgow, 1873. 
, Christian liberty in relation to communion wine (a sequel 

to the foregoing). Glasgow, 1873. 
Thompson, Dr. Spencer, Temperance and total abstinence; or, the 

use and abuse of alcoholic liquors in health and disease. 

London, 1850. 
Wilson, Rev. T. C, The British idol: a book for young people, 

about intoxicating drink and the sin of using it. Glasgow, 1850. 
Anon., Intemperance the pestilence of the age. London, 1850. 
Anon., Keasons for advocating total abstinence from intoxicating 

drinks. By an old abstainer. London, 1850. 
Dunchley, Henry, The glory and the shame of Britain ; an essay on 

the condition and claims of the working classes, together with 

the means of securing elevation. London, 1851. 
Hunt, Colin A., Necessity, practicability, and value of total 

abstinence. (Prize Essay.) London, 1851. 
Spears, Michael, The principles and practice of total abstinence. 

(Prize Essay.) London, 1851. 
Articles on Dr. Magnus Huss's (of Stockholm) Chronic Alcoholism. 

British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, January, 

1851 to April, 1852. 
Barnes, Rev. Albert, The Throne of Iniquity. London, 1852. 
Headland, Dr. Frederick William, An essay on the action of 

medicines in the system. (Alcohol, pp. 327-330.) (Prize 

Essay.) London, 1852. 
Marshall, Mrs., The Profligate's Dream. Edinburgh, 1852. 
A Voice from the House of Lords one hundred years ago ; or, the 

guilt and national impolicy of encouraging the traffic in 

intoxicating liquors. Glasgow, 1852. 
The Temperance Eeformation : being select papers on the leading 

aspects of the question. By various authors. Dundee, 1852. 
Pereira, Dr. Jonathan, The Elements of materia medica. (Yol. ii. 

part ii. Art. Alcohol, pp. 1936-1958.) London, 1853. 
Bettle, William, The Temperance movement, its objects and aims. 

London, 1854. 
Holroyd, W. H., Sabbath drinking; its evils and remedies. York, 

1854. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 519 

Peddie, Dr. Alexander, Pathology of delirium tremens, and its 

treatment without stimulants, etc. Edinburgh, 1854. 
Shirley, Stephen, Our national sinews : a word on the present 

condition of the working classes. London, about 1854. 
Wilson, Dr. Charles, The pathology of drunkenness. Edinburgh, 

1854. 
The London Chemical Gazette, p. 35, etc. London, 1854. 
Buxton, Charles (Brewer), How to stop drunkenness. (North 

British Review, February.) 1855. 
Oough, John B., Autobiography and orations. London, 1855. 
Morris, Edward, History of temperance and teetotal societies in 

Grlasgow. Glasgow, 1855. 
Ritchie, Eev. William, Scripture testimony against intoxicating 

wine. Glasgow, 1855. 

, , New Edition, much enlarged. Glasgow, 1874. 

Williams, J., On the use of narcotics. 1855. 

Courtenay, A., Both sides ; or, objections to teetotalism. About 

1856. 
Gael, Eev. Henry, Apostolic Temperance. 1856. 
Laird, Dr. Samuel, The Glass and its victims. London, 1856. 
Spencer, Rev. A., A plea for abstinence. London, 1856. 
Tweedie's Temperance Year-Book. London, 1856-1876. 
Guy, Dr., Intemperance in its physical and moral aspects. ( Weekly 

Record, April 25, May 2 and 9.) London, 1857. 
Miller, Dr. James, Abstinence ; its place and power. London, 1857. 
, Prostitution considered in its relation to its cause and cure. 

Edinburgh, 1859. 

, Alcohol; its place and power. Glasgow, 1861. 

, Nephalism, the true temperance of scripture, science, and 

experience. Glasgow, 1861. 
Mulder, G. J., The Chemistry of wine. (Adulteration of wine, 

pp. 350-377.) London, 1857. 
A Full Keport of the proceedings of the ministerial conference on 

the suppression of the liquor traffic held at Manchester, June, 

1857. Manchester, 1857. 
Copland, Dr, James, A dictionary of practical medicine. (Arts, on 

delirium with tremor, drunkenness, vol. i.) London, 1858. 
An essay on Solomon's use of alcoholic wine and his opinion 

thereof. 1858. 
"Wines and their uses. {British and Foreign Medico- Chirurgical 

Review, April.) 1858. 
Anon. (Kev. William Eeid?), Christianity in its antagonism to 

drunkenness. A discourse of facts and principles, corrective, 

admonitory, ciid suggestive. London, 1859. 
Bayly, Mrs., Kagged homes and how to mend them. London, 

1859. 
Easton, Rev. George, The wine of Cana. Glasgow, 1859. 



520 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Easton JRev. George, An autobiography. Glasgow, 1867. 
Edward, J. B., An essay on drunkenness. Melbourne, 1859. 
Garrod, Dr. Alfred Baring, The nature and treatment of gout. 

London, 1859. 

, Gout aijd rheumatic gout. London, 1876. 

Lewis, David, History of the temperance movement in Scotland. 

Edinburgh, 1859. 

, Britain's social state. Glasgow, 1878. 

, The drink problem and its solution. London, 1881. 

Wilson, Bev. J. H., Our moral wastes and how to reclaim them. 

London, 1859. 
The politics of temperance. (By various authors.) Manchester, 

1859. 
The temperance pulpit. (Ten sermons.) Glasgow, 3859. 
Close, Bev. F., Why I have taken the pledge. Carlisle. 1860. 
Marcet, Dr. William, On experimental inquiry into the action of 

alcohol on the nervous system (^Medical Times and Gazette), 

vol. i. pp. 214, 264-312. London, 1860. 

, On chronic alcoholic intoxication. London, 1862. 

, Inquiry into the influence of the abuse of alcohol as a 

predisposing cause of disease. {British and Foreign Medico- 

Chirurgical Beview, second series, vol, xxix. p. 485.) 1862. 
Marston, Dr. Jeffrey A., On delirium tremens. {Edinhurgh 

Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. vi. p. 305.) Edinburgh, 

1860. 
M'Oulloch, Dr. J. M., The temperance reformation from a medical 

point of view. Glasgow, 1860. 
Smith, Dr. Edward, Action of Tea and Alcohol Contrasted. 

(Dublin Medical Fress, second series, vol. ii. p. 58.) Dublin, 

1860. 
, Oq the mode of action of alcohol in the treatment of 

disease. (Lam^cet, vol. 1, pp. 80, 132, 212.) London, 1861. 
, On the action of alcohol. In Journal of the Society of Arts, 

January 18, 1862.) London, 1862. 
Taylor, John, Drunkenness as an indirect cause of crime ; with 

map showing number of public-houses in the metropolis. 

London, 1860. 
Wightman, Mrs., Haste to the rescue. London, 1860. 

, Arrest the destroyer's march. London, 1876. 

Barclay, Dr. John, Ale, wine, spirits, and tobacco. London, 1861. 
Brinton, Dr. William, On food and its digestion (pp. 365-398). 

London, 186L 
Ellis, Charles, The origin, nature, and history of wine. London, 1861. 
Gairdner, Dr. W. E., On the use of alcoholic stimulants in 

hospital medical practice. (Edinburgh Medical and Surgical 

Journal, vol. vi. p. 961.) Edinburgh, 1861. 
liempel, Dr. Charles J"., A new and comprehensive system of 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 521 

materia medica and therapeutics, arranged upon a physiological 

pathological basis. London, 1861. 
Inman, Dr. Thomas, Foundation for a new theory and practice of 

medicine. London, 1861. 
Lankester, Br. Ediuin, On Food. (Two courses of Lectures.) 

London, 1861. (Second course, alcohol, wine, spirit, and 

beer, etc.) 
An&tie, Dr. Francis E., Cases illustrating the action of alcohol as 

aliment in disease. {London Medical Review.') 1862. 

, The alcoholic question. {London Medical Review.) 1862. 

, Stimulants and narcotics : their mutual relations, with special 

researches on the action of alcohol^ eether, etc., on the vital 

organism. London, 1864. 
, Alcoholism. An article in Dr. J. R. Eeynolds' " A System of 

Medicine " (vol. ii. pp. 63-93). London, 1868. 

, On the uses of wines in health and disease. London, 1877. 

Couling, Samuel, History of the temperance movement in Grreat 

Britain and Ireland. London, 1862. 

, Teetotalism versus alcohol. London, 1863. 

Figg, Dr. Edward Garland, On the physiological operation of 

alcohol. {Temjperance Spectator, July to December inclusive.) 

London, 1862. 
Kirh, Rev. John, Medicinal drinking. Glasgow, 1862. 

, Britain's drawbacks. Glasgow, 1868. 

, Papers on health. Fourth series, water and food. London, 

1879. Sixth series, Brandy, London, 1881. 
Stewart, Rev. Alexander, A practical Bible commentary. Aber- 
deen, 1862. 
Alcohol: is it food, medicine, or poison? {Cornhill Magazine, 

January.) London, 1862. 
Does alcohol act as a food? {Qornhill Magazine, September.) 

1862. 
Proceedings of the International Temperance and Prohibition Con- 
vention held in London, September 2, 3, and 4, 1862. (Edited 

by Piev. J. C. (Street, Dr. F. R. Lees, and Rev. D. Burns, 

518 8vo pp.) London, 1862. 
Temperance Congress of 1862. London, 1862, 
Darker, Joseph, The drink traffic and the temperance movement. 

London, 1863. 
Maguire, J. F., Father Matthew: a biography. London, 1863. 
Nott, Rev. Eliphalet, Lectures on biblical temperance. London, 

1863. 
Shaiv, Thomas George, Wine, the vine, and the cellar. London, 

1863. 
Taylor, Robert, The teetotalers guide. Newcastle, 1863. 
A guide to the treatment of disease without alcoholic liquors. 

London, 1863. 



522 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Anon., The Nemesis of drink. London, 1863. 

Fletcher, F. D., On Dipsomania. (^British Medical Journal.) 

London, 1864. 
Hoyle, William, Intemperance and crime ; their causes and reme- 
dies. London, 1864. 

, Our national resources, and how they are wasted. London, 1871. 

, On the waste of wealth. London, 1873. 

, The qnestion of the day ; or, facts and figures for electors 

and politicians. London, 1874. 
, Total abstinence, a physical and moral obligation. London, 

1874. 
, Crime in England and Wales in the nineteenth century. 

London, 1876. 

, On the causes of bad trade. London, 1877-1879. 

• ■, Over-production and the present stagnation in trade. Man- 
chester, 1878. 
■ , Our national drink bill as it affects the nation's well-being. 

A series of letters to the Times and other newspapers, together 

with original articles. London, 1884. 
Handsel, Marshall, Britain's bane and antidote. London, 1864. 
Sheen, James R., Wines and other fermented liquors from the earliest 

ages to the present time. London, 1864. 
A Working Man, The philosophy of toasts and health- drinking. 

Edinburgh, 1864. 
Anon., Life and labours of the Rev. J. Tunnicliffe. Leeds, 1865. 
Edmunds, Mrs. E. L., Life and memorials of the late Rev. W. R. 

Baker. London, 1865. 
Kirton, J. W., The fair pillars of temperance. London, 1865. 

, One thousand temperance anecdotes. London, 1868. 

• , John Wesley's Methodism and the temperance reformation. 

London, 1873. 
, Intoxicating drinks; their history and mystery. London, 

1879. 
Munroe, Dr. Henry, The physiological action of alcohol. London, 

1865. 

, Alcohol not food. London, 1867. 

■ , Fashions in medicine. London, 1872. 

, The drink we consume. 

Bemnan, James L., Wine as it should be, etc. London, 1866. 

, What is wine? London, 1874. 

Eve, P. F., Whisky and tobacco : their effects upon soldiers and 

others. Nashville, 1866. 
Graham's Temperance Guide, Maidstone. 1866-1880. 
Earwood, Jacob, and J. C. Hotten, The history of sign boards from 

the earliest time to the present day. London, 1866. 
Woodman, W. B., On the elimination of alcohol by the human 

kidney. {Medical Mirror.) London, 1866. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 523 

Edmunds, Dr. James, Alcohol as a medicine, a lecture delivered 
in Manchester Town Hall, before the Manchester Diocesan 
Church of Ed gland and Ireland Temperance Reformation 
Society, February 21, 1867. 

' , Alcoholic drinks as an article of diet for nursing mothers. 

London, 1879. 

Johnston, Eev. A., On the extent and direct cost of the drinking 
system of Scotland. London, 1867. 

Mundy, E., The Contrast. (A temperance prize essay.) Brighton, 
1867. 

Boohe, Rev. Thomas, Clerical testimony in favour of total absti- 
nence. London, 1867. 

Skey, Dr. F. C, Hysteria. (Six lectures to students of St. Bar- 
tholomew's Hospital, 1866.) London, 1867. 

Vaughan, F., Weighed in the balance : on the necessity and 
advantages of total abstinence. (Prize essay.) Brighton, 
1867. 

WilTcs, Dr. Samuel, Clinical lecture on the indiscriminate use of 
alcoholic stimulants in disease. (^Lancet, vol. 1, pp. 505-507.) 
London, 1867. 

Wine and the wine trade. {Edinburgh Review, July.) 1867. 

Anderson, John Rennet, Bible teetotalism. London, 1868. 

Lees, Dr. F. R., and Bev. Daiuson Rums, The Temperance Bible 
Commentary. London, 1868. 

Reynolds, Dr. J. Russell, A system of medicine. (Vol. ii. Alcoholism, 
by l5r. F. E. Anstie, pp. 63-93 ; and Insanity, by Dr. Henry 
Maudsley, pp. 8-62.) London, 1868. 

Russell, Rev. A. G., Drinking and disease. London, 1868. 

Ward, George, The opinions and practice of medical men with 
regard to intoxicating drinks as a medicine. Leeds, 1868. 

Adair, Rohert Graham, The question of the times : temperance 
and the liquor traffic. London, 1869. 

Ellison, Rev. H. J., The temperance reformation movement in the 
Church of England. London, 1869. 

, The temperance reformation movement in the Church of 

England. London, 1878. 

Harley, John^ The old vegetable narcotics. London, 1869. 

Prescott, E. P., Strong drink and tobacco smoke. London, 1869. 

Thudichum, Dr. John Louis W., On wines ; their origin, nature, 
analysis, and uses. London, 1869. 

, A Treatise on the origin, nature, and varieties of wine. 

London, 1872. 

Baird, Dr. Rohert, Physiological essays, drink-craving, differences 
in men, idiusyncracy, and the origin of disease. London, 
1870. 

Parkes, Dr. Edmund A., and Wollowicz, Count Cyprian, Experi- 
ments on the effect of alcohol (ethyl-alcohol) on the human 



524 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

body. (ProceediDgs of the Royal Society of London, vol. 

xviii. pp. 362-393.) London, 1870. 
Parhes, Dr. Edmund A., and WoIIowicz, Count Cyprian, Experi- 
ments on the action of red Bordeaux wine (claret) on the 

human body. (Vol. xix. pp. 73-89.) London, 1870. 
, A manual of practical hygiene, intended especially for 

medical officers of the army and civil medical officers of 

health. (Alcoholic beverages, pp. 257-287.) London, 1873. 
, On the issue of a spirit ration during the Ashanti Campaign 

of 1874. London, 1875. 

, Public Health. London, 1876, 

• , A manual of practical hygiene. London, 1878. 

, On personal care of health. London. 

Powell, Frederick, Bacchus dethroned. (Prize essay.) London, 

1870. 
Samuelson, James, Beer scientifically and socially considered. 

London, 1870. 

, History of drink. London, 1880. 

Sharjpe, Samtbel, The history of Egypt. (On Wine^ see vol. i. p. 

42.) London, 1870. 
Medical experience and testimony in favour of total abstinence. 

London, 1870. 
Annual Reports of the London Temperance Hospital. London, 

1871-1883. 
Medical Temperance Journal (Quarterly). London, 1870-1884 . 
Walter, Eev. J., England's curse and its cure. London, 1871. 
Wood, The Licensed Victuallers Bill. London, 1871. 
Drawing-room Alcoholism. {Saturday Review, January 21.) 

London, 1871. 
Women and alcohol. {Spectator, February 18, 1871.) London, 1871. 
Curtis, Piolert, The trial of Captain Alcohol. Dublin, 1872. 
Bwpre, Dr. A., Proceedings of the Royal Society (No. 131, p. 177 ; 

and No. 133, p. 268). London, 1872. 
Griffin, John J., The chemical testing of wines and spirits. 

London, 1872. 
Harris, Dr. Sylvanus, Inebriety, continuous and periodical. London, 

, 1872. 
Eeslop, T. P., The abuse of alcohol in the treatment of acute 

disease. London, 1872. 
Levi, Prof. Leone, Consumption of spirits, beer, and wine, in its 

relation to licences, drunkenness, and crime. London, 1872. 
Riddell, Mrs. J. H., May we drink cold water, and if so, when? 

{London Society, October.) London, 1872. 
Solly, Rev. Eenry, Working men's clubs and alcoholic drinks. 

London, 1872. 
Stewart, Rev. Alexander, A practical Bible temperance commentary, 

Aberdeen, 1872. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 525 

Ward, Robert, The fallacies of teetotalism. London, 1872. 

Watts, Dr. Henry, A dictionary of chemistry. (Vol. i. pp. 73-80, 

on Alcohol; pp. 81-96, on AlcoJwlometry ; pp. 97-104, on 

Alcohols ; pp. 105-110, on Aldehyde, . . . and Aldehijdes.) 

London, 1872-1881. 
The licensing system. - {British Quarterly Review.) London, 1872. 
Medical opinions on the temperance question. London, 1872. 
Binz, Prof. Carl (of Bonn), Some effects of alcohol. (Address at 

the Annual Meeting of the British Association for the Advance 

of Science.) September, 1873. 
, The Elements of therapeutics. (Translated by Edward 

Sparks.) London, 1877. 
Druitt, Dr. Robert, Report on the cheap wines from France, 

G-ermany, Italy, etc. London, 1873. 
Lush, William John Henry, Chronic alcoholism and its treatment 

by galvanism. 1873. 
, Faradization in cases of chronic alcoholism. {Lancet, 

November 29.) 1879. 
McClintoch, A. H., Remarks on the semiology of chronic alcoholism. 

Dublin, 1873. 
Athin, Frederic, The philosophy of the temperance reformation. 

London, 1874. 
Gillespie, David, The Gothenburg licensing system. Edinburgh 

1874. 
Lucas, Dr. Thomas P., Does alcohol impart strength, or is it a 

food? London, 1874. 

, The laws of life and alcohol. London, 1877. 

, The true action and physiological results of alcohol. 

London, 1877. 
The alcohol question. London, 1880. 
Pavey, Dr. T. W., Treatise on food; (Alcohol, pp. 121-125 ; on 

elimination of alcohol, pp. 341-379.) London, 1874. 
Ringer, Dr. Sydney, Handbook of therapeutics. London, 1874. 
Alcohol ; its friends and foes. {British and Foreign Medico- 

Chirurgical Review, vol. liii. pp. 16-43.) London, 1874. 
Chambers' Cyclopaedia. Articles : diet ; digestion ; drinking 

usages ; food and drink ; temperance. London, 1874. 
Report of the Committee on intemperance for the convocation of 

the province of York. Manchester, 1874. 
Ashcroft, Rev. T., Teetotalism not a delusion ; or, a vicar's charges 

refuted. London, 1875. 
Alford, Stephen Shute, A few words on drink-craving. London, 

1875. 
Daniel, J. J., Strong drink and Christian duty. Salisbury, 1875. 
Richardson, Dr. Benjamin Ward, On alcohol; a course of six 

Cantor Lectures, delivered before the Society of Arts. London, 

1875. 



526 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Bichardson, Dr. Benjamin Ward, The action of alcohol on the 

mind. London, 1877. 

, Eesults of researches on alcohol. London^ 1877. 

■ , The true moderation in drink. Oxford and Cambridge, 

1877. 

, Diseases of modern life. London, 1877. 

, Moderate drinking ; for and against, from scientific points. 

London, 1878. 
, Moderate drinking. Lecture delivered in Exeter Hall, 

December 14, 1878. 

, The temperance lesson-book. London, 1878. 

, Total abstinence. London, 1878. 

, Dialogues on drink. Glasgow, 1878. 

, A ministry of health. Glasgow, 1878. 

, Drink and strong drink. Glasgow, 1882. 

, The Field of Disease. London, 1883. 

, Brief notes for temperance teachers. London, 1884. 

Smith, J., The Temperance Reformation and its claims. London, 

1875. 
Vizetelly, Henry, The wines of the world. London, 1875. 
Wagstaff, Bev. F., Communion wine ; fermented or unfermented. 

London, 1875. 
The Bible and strong drinks. {Westminster Beview, January.) 

London, 1875. 
The physiological influences of alcohol. Edinhurgli Beview, July, 

1875. 
Alford, S. S., A few words on drink-craving, London, 1876. 
Bridgett, Bev. Thomas E., The discipline of drink. London, 

1876. 
Evans, Joseph, Arrows from a temperance quiver. London, 1876. 
Eaddon, James, On intemperance in women, with special reference 

to its efiects on the reproductive system. {British Medical 

Journal, vol. i. pp. 748-750.) London, 1876. 
Hassall, Arthur Hill, Food : its adulterations, and the methods for 

their detection. London, 1876. 
Kerr, Dr. Norman, The action of alcoholic liquors in health. 

London, 1876. 

' , How to check drunkenness. London, 1878. 

, Intemperance and its remedy. London, 1878. 

• , The mortality of intemperance. London, 1879. 

, Female intemperance. London, 1879. 

, The medical history of the temperance movement. {Temper- 
ance Becord, September 4.) London, 1879. 

, The hereditj^ of alcohol. London, 1880. 

, Diseases from alcohol. London, 1882. 

, Stimulants in workhouses. London, 1882. 

, Unfermented wine a fact. London, 1882. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 527 

Kerr, Dr. Norman, Wines^ scriptural and ecclesiastical. London 

1882 

, Wines. London, 1882. 

, The treatment of inebriates. London, 1882. 

, Kelations between intemperance and insanity. London, 1882. 

, Eecently imported wines. {Medical Press and Circular.) 

London, 1882. 
, Passover wine : an appeal on bebalf of reformed inebriates, 

London, 1883. 

, The truth about alcohol. London, 1884. 

, Inaugural address to the society for the study and cure of 

inebriety. London, 1884. 
Murchison, Dr. Finlay, Eclampsia in a case of dipsomania. 

(^British Medical Journal.) London, 1876. 
Smith, Dr. Ernest L. T., The influence of alcoholism in the causa- 
tion and aggravation of disease. London, 1876. 
Verdad, Pedro {'pseud. for Walter MacGee). From vineyard to 

decanter : a book about sherry. London, 1876. 
The Temperance Bible Commentary. By Lees, Rich, and Burns. 

London, 1876. 
The Ladies' National Temperance Convention. London, 1876. 
Allen, N., Effects of alcobol on the offspring. {Journal of Psychical 

Medicine, vol. iii. pp. 209-214.) London, 1877. 
Arnold, Rohert Arthur, English drunkenness and Swedish licens- 
ing. London, 1877. 
Bullock, Rev. Charles, The temperance witness-box. London, 

1877. 
Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. Joseph, Public-house reform. (Speech in 

reply to an Article in the Fortnightly Review, by Hon. Eobert 

Lowe.) London, 1877. 
Clarke, Ehenezer, The worship of Bacchus a great delusion. 

London, 1877. 
Crane, Rev. J. T., The arts of intoxication. Otley, 1877. 
Crowquill, Alfred (pseud.), The reproof of the brutes. London, 

1877. 
Darton, Thomas Gates, The total abstinence agitation in its relation 

to intemperance. London^ 1877. 
Farrar, Archdeacon Frederick W., The vow of the Nazarite. 

London, 1877. 

, Abstinence from evil. London, 1880. 

French, Rev. Richard Valpy, Does the Bible support total absti- 
nence ? London, 1877. 

, Pleas for abstinence. London, 1878. 

, United Temperance Mission held at Newport. London, April, 

1879. 
, History of toasting ; or, drinking healths in England. 

London, 1881. 



528 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

French, Rev. Bichard Valpy, !N'meteen centuries of drink in 

England. London, 1884. 
Guthrie, Rev. John, Tem]')erance physiology. G-lasgow, 1877. 
Magnan, Dr. Victor (Paris), On alcoholism : the various forms of 

alcoholic delirium and their treatment. (Translated by W. S. 

Greenfield.) London, 1877. 
Parton, James, Does it pay to smoke and drink ? London, 1877. 
Patterson, James, The intoxicating liquor licensing acts. London , 

1877. 
Third Eeport on intemperance before the select committee of the 

House of Commons. London, 1877. 
Moister, Rev. William, The evil and the remedy. London, 1877. 
Murchison, Br. Charles, Clinical lectures on diseases of the liver. 

London, 1877. 
Wilson, Rev. A. M., The wines of the Bible, London, 1877. 
Alcohol and spirit-drinking amongst soldiers. (^Indian Medical 

Gazette, xii.) Calcutta, 1877. 
An account of the drunken sea. By a Physician. London, 1877. 
Temperance Catechism and confession of faith. Glasgow, 1877. 
Bacon, George W., Alcohol at the bar : the highest medical and 

scientific testimony concerning its use. London, 1878. 
Buchnill, Dr. John Charles, Habitual drunkenness and insane 

drunkards. London, 1878. 
G. W., The wine question. London, 1878. 
Lawson, Dr. Robert, Symptomatology of alcoholic brain disorders. 

(The brain.) 1878. 
Lewis, David, Britain's social state. Glasgow, 1878. 

, The drink problem and its solution. London, 1881. 

Morton, Dr. T:, The mortality referable to alcohol. {Medical 

Press and Circular, vol. xxvi. pp. 448-452.) London, 

1878. 
Evidence on the Forbes-Mackenzie Act. Manchester, 1878. 
Why, a pamphlet in favour of teetotalism. Salisbury, 1878. 
Atkinson, Dr. F. P., A cause of alcoholism, etc., with the treat- 
ment suggested. (Practitioner.) London, 1879. 
Balfour, Dr. C. W., Delirium Tremens. Clinical lectures on the 

treatment of D. T. (Lancet.) London, 1879. 
Dolan, Dr. F. M., Pauperism and drink., etc. (Medical Press and 

Circular.) London, 1879. 
Drysdale, Dr. Charles R., A few words about alcohol and its use 

by healthy persons. London, 1879. 
Granville, Dr. J. Mortimer, Is insanity increasing? (Nineteenth 

Century, March.) London, 1879. 
Eophins, W. B., Holy scripture, temperance, and total abstinence. 

London, 1879. 
Johnston, Prof. James F. W., Chemistry of common life. London, 

1879. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 529 

Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, The drink difficulty. (Nineteenth Century.) 

London, 1879. 
Maguire, Rev. J"., Temperance landmarks : from 1829 to 1879. 

London, 1879. 
Paget, Sir James, Alcohol question. London, 1879. 
Bidge, Dr. J. James, The temperance primer. London, 1879. 

, The non-alcoholic treatment of disease. London, 1880. 

, The temperance Pilgrim's Progress. London, 1882. 

Sherlock, Frederick, Fifty years ago ; or, Erin's temperance jubilee. 

Belfast, 1879. 

, Illustrious abstainers. London, 1880. 

, Heroes in the strife. London, 1881. 

, Shakespeare on temperance. London, 1882. 

, Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Bart., M.P., on temperance. London, 1882. 

Southey, Dr. Reginald, On the action of alcohol. (In physiology 

for practical uses.) London, 1879. 
Weston, Agnes, Temperance work in the royal navy. London, 1879. 
Young, Analytical (Grreek and Hebrew) concordance (p. 1058). 

Edinburgh, 1879. 
The liquor traffic: should it be prohibited? (Duhlin Review, 

July.) Dublin, 1879. 
Second Annual Report of the society for promoting legislation 

for the control and cure of habitual drunkards. London, 

1879. 
Self-cure of the love of liquor and the opium habit. London, 1879. 
Aitkin, Dr. William, The science and practice of medicine. (Al- 
coholism, vol. ii. pp. 1084-1094.) London, 1880. 
Brown, Dr. Fergus Malcolm, Drunkenness or apoplexy. (Lancet.) 

London, 1880. 
Corfield, Dr. William Hy., Health. London, 1880. 
Couling, Samuel, History of the temperance movement in Great 

Britain and Ireland. London, 1880. 
Hall, Dr. J., Drink thirst : Its medical treatment. London, 1880, 
Einton, Dr. James, Physiology for practical use. London, 1880. 
Howie, Dr. James M., Stimulants and narcotics. London, 1880. 
Lewis, Dr. William Bevan, Physiological action of alcohol 

(journal of Mental Science.) London, 1880. 
Lngham, John, A temperance reading-book ; or, elementary 

chapters on alcohol. London, 1880. 
Malins, Joseph, The Shakespearian temperance Co. kalendar, 

London, 1880. 
Scholfield, Amos, Loose bricks for temperance and social workers. 

London, 1880. 
Sutherland, Dr H^ary, Cases of alcoholic insanity in private 

practice. Paper read before British Medical Association in 1880. 
Whitwell, E., Evidence on the closing of public-houses on Sunday. 

Manchester, 1880. 

2m 



530 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Whyte, James, The alcoholic controversy : an examination of 

articles in the Contemporary Bevievj. London, 1880. 
Anon., Babylonian cups. (By a special commissioner.) London, 

1880. 
The Thirty-fom'th Eeport of the Commissioners of Lunacy, to the 

Lord Chancellor. London, 1880. 
Temperance International Conference, edited by H. C. Rudd, and 

H. T. C. Cox. Melbourne, 1880. 
Ahhey, John, Intemperance : its bearing upon agriculture. London, 

188L 
Clarke, Dr. Andrew, Alcohol in small doses. London, 1881. 

, An enemy of the race. London, 1882. 

Pearson, Rev. Thos., The Bible and temperance; or, the true scrip- 
tural basis of the temperance movement. London, 1881. 
Winshill, T. P., History of the rise and progress of the temper- 
ance reformation. Warrington, 1881. 
Winslow, Rev. F. E., The death march of great drinkdom. 

London, 1881. 

■ , Come out from among them. London, 1882. 

National Temperance League Annual. London, 1881, 1882, 1883, 

1884. 
Caine, Rev. William, Thoughts for Christians on Bible wines and 

temperance. Manchester, 1882. 
Cariienter, Alfred, Alcoholic drinks not necessaries of life. London, 

1882. 
Evans, T. H., The abstainer's companion. (Evan's Temperance 

Annual, 1877-1882.) London, 1882. 
■ , The Picture-gallery of Bacchus ; or, temperance readings on 

public-house signs. London, 1882. 
, The temperance ladder : a collection of original dialogues and 

recitations. London, 1883. 
Gilbert, William, Legion ; or, the modern demoniac. London, 1882. 
Harris, Dr. William, Insanity : its causes, prevention, and treat- 
ment. London, 1882. 
Ollis, Rev. Thomas, Scripture texts on temperance critically 

examined. Edited by F. Atkin. Liverpool, 1882. 
Wagstaf, Rev. F., Temperance lessons for the young. Birmingham, 

1882. 
Ackroyd, William, The history and the science of drunkenness. 

London, 1883. 
Bennet, Dr. Dally W., Alcohol : its use and abuse. Torquay, 

1883. 
Brunton, Dr. Lauder, The influence of stimulants and narcotics 

on health. (Book of health, edited by Malcolm Morris, pp. 

183-240, on Alcohol.) London, 1883. 
Clouston, Dr. T. S., The effects of the excessive use of alcohol 

on the mental functions of the brain. Edinburgh, 1883. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 531 

Eindle, Frederick G., The legal status of licensed victuallers. 

London, 1883. 
Morrel, Rev. J. M., Hints and topics for temperance speakers. 

London, 1883. 
Peek, Francis, Social wreckage. London, 1883. 
Price, Mrs., First steps to temperance. London, 1883. 
Reade, A. Arthur, Study and stimulants. Manchester, 1883. 

, Short anecdotes on temperance. London, 1884. 

Kallos, A treatise on the scientific culture of personal beauty and 

the cure of ugliness. By a Fellow of the Eoyal College of 

Surgeons. London, 1883. 
The Evils of Grocers' and Shopkeepers' Licences. London, 1883. 
Paterson, Dr. H. Sinclair, Life, function, health. London, 1884. 
Sliarman, H. P., A cloud of witnesses against grocers' licences. 

London, 1884. 
Sj)riggs- Smith, Pev., The Burton brewers and the clergy. London, 

1884. 
Pussell, T. W., K social experiment ; or, five years before and 

after Sunday closing in Ireland. Dublin, 1884. 



UNITED STATES. 

Protest of the Society of Friends against the drink at Funerals. 1760. 

Anon., The mighty destroyer displayed in some account of the 
dreadful havock made by the mistaken uses as well as abuse 
of distilled spirituous liquors. (By a lover of mankind.) 
Philadelphia, 1774. 

First Continental Congress recommended the Colonies to put an 
end to the " pernicious practice of distilling grain." 1774. 

Benezet, Anthony, Eemarks on the nature and bad effects of 
spirituous liquors. Philadelphia, Pa. 1778. 

200 farmers protested against the use of liquors in their farm 
work, and formed the first Temperance Society of modern times 
at Litchfield, Conn. 1779. 

A conference of Methodist churches held at Baltimore, April 24, 
adopted the following : — " Do we disapprove of the practice of 
distilling grain into liquor ? Shall we disown our friends who 
will not renounce the practice ? Yes." 1780. 

The conference which organized the M. E. Church of America 
assembled at Baltimore, Ma., December 27. It adopted " Mr. 
Wesley's original rule" forbidding "drunkenness, buying or 
selling spirituous liquors, or drinking them, unless in cases of 
extreme necessity," as published in The Discipline for the 
Churches. 1784."' 



532 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

A volume of sermons on temperance, apparently written by a 

physician, believed to have been by Dr. Rush. Philadelphia, 

Pa. 1790. 
Rush, Dr. Benjamin, An inquiry into the effects of spirituous 

liquors. Philadelphia, Pa., 1793. 
, Inquiry into the effects of ardent spirits upon the human 

body and mind. Philadelphia, Pa., 1794. 

[The views of Dr. Rush had been given for years in his 
medical lectures, and large editions of this book were 
pubhshed in 1804 and 1811.] 
Porter, Bev. Bhenezer, Fatal effects of ardent spirits. Washington, 

Conn., 1806. 
Humphrey, Bev. Heman, Address on temperance to the Fairfield 

Co, Association. Fairfield, Conn., 1813. 
Cleveland, Barker, Address on the suppression of intemperance. 

Boston, Mass., 1814. 
KirMand, Bev. JoJin T., Sermon before the Massachusetts Temper- 
ance Society. Boston, Mass., 1814. 
Abbot, Bev. A., Sermon before the Massachusetts Society. Boston, 

Mass., 1815. 

Appleton, Bev. J., Sermon before the Massachusetts Society. 

Boston, Mass., 1816. 
Bead, Dr. Alexander, An Address delivered before the New Bedford 

Auxiliary Society for the suppression of intemperance, at their 

Annual Meeting, January 6, 1817, New Bedford, Mass., 1817. 
Worcester, Bev. Samuel, The drunkard a destroyer. Boston, Mass., 

1817. 
Cogswell, Bev. William, Discourse delivered before the Dedham 

Auxiliary Society. Dedham, Mass., 1818. 
Nichols, Andrew, Address delivered in Danvers before the Society 

for suppressing intemperance. Salem, Mass., 1819. 
Hertell, Thomas, Expose of the cause of intemperate drinkings, etc. 

Philadelphia, Pa., 1819. 
Jonhs, Bev. W., Sermons before the Massachusetts Society. Boston, 

1821. 
Proctor, J. W., Address on temperance. Danvers, Mass., 1821. 
Warren, Henry, Sermon delivered at Roxburg before the Roxburg 

AuxiHary Society. Boston, Mass., 1821. 
Bronson, Salmon, A Mirror for christian poisoners, legal swindlers, 

their associates and abettors. New York, 1823. 
Nott, Bev. Samuel, Sermon on intemperance. Galway, New York, 

1823. 
Warren, Abbott, Address on temperance. Danvers, Mass., 1823. 
Ware, Bev. Henry, Criminality of intemperance. Boston, Mass., 1832. 
Edwards, Bev. Justin, The Well-conducted farm ; a tract on 

farming carried on without the use of stimulants. Andover, 

Mass., 1825. 



BIBLIOGEAPHT. 583 

Edwards, Bev. Justin, A Temperance manual. New York. 
Ware, Dr. Jolm, Address before Massachusetts Peace Society. 

Boston, Mass., 1825. 
Beecher, Bev. Lyman, Six sermons on the nature, signs, evils, and 

remedy of intemperance. Litchfield, Conn., 1826. 
Bradford, Gamaliel, Address before the Massachusetts Society. 

Boston, 1826. 
Chapin, Bev. Calvin, of Eocky Hill, Conn., Entire abstinence the 

only infallible antidote, (A series of essays published in 

the Connecticut Observer, 1826.) 
Stuart, Bev. Moses, An essay upon the Wines and strong drinks 

of the ancient Hebrews, etc. (Prize Essay.) New York, 1826. 

, Teetotalism weighed in the balances. New York, 1837. 

Weems, A., Peter and John Hay. (A Tract.) 1826. 

Yale, Bev. C, Sermon on intemperance. Williamstown. Mass., 

1826. 
Bannantyne, J., Intemperance among literary men. Portland, 

L828. 
The National Bhilanthropist. (A weekly.) Motto : Moderate 

Drinking is the down-hill road to intemperance and drunken- 
ness. It was the first temperance paper ever published in 

the world. Issued April 1st, 1826. Publisher, Eev. William 

Collier, Baptist minister in Boston, Mass. Mr. William Lloyd 

Garrison was its editor. 
Palfrey, John G., Discourses on intemperance. Boston, Mass., 1827. 
Mussey, B. D., An address on ardent spirits, read before the New 

Hampshire Medical Society at their annual meeting (June 5, 

1827). Boston, 1829. 
, Essay on ardent spirits and its substitutes as a means of 

invigorating health. Washington, 1885. 

, Alcohol in health and disease. Cincinnati, 1856. 

Hitchcock, Prof. Edward, Dyspepsia forestalled and resisted ; or, 

lectures on diet, regimen, and employment. Amherst, 1830. 
Medical Opinions. Keport of New York Temperance Society. 

New York, 1830. 
Ware, John, Eemarks on the history and treatment of delirium 

tremens. Boston, Mass., 1831. 
Gillpatrich, James, The nature and remedy of intemperance. 

Boston, 1832. 
Beaumont, Dr. William, Experiments and observations on the 

gastric juice and the physiology of digestion. Plattsburg, 

New York, 1833. 
Bell, Dr., Address to the Medical Students' Temperance Society of 

Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Pa., 1833. 
Fox, Thomas B., Traffic in ardent spirits; an argument against 

the manufacture and sale of ardent spirits as a drink. Dover, 

1833. 



534 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Allen, Jonathan A., An essay on the use of narcotic substances. 

Middlebury, 1835. 
Harvey, Dr., Prize essay on heredity from drink. Washington, 

D. 0., 1835. 
Lindsly, H., An essay on the origin and introduction into medical 

practice, etc., etc., of ardent spirits. Washington, D. C, 

1835. 
Baird, History of the temperance societies of the United States. 

1836. 
Channing, Bev. William Ellery, An address on temperance. 

Boston, Mass., 1837. 
Ahhot, John Slavens Cahot, Lecture on the licence laws. London, 

1838. 
Bacon, Bev. Leonard, Discourse on the traffic in spirituous liquors. 

New Haven, Conn., 1838. 
Kirk, Bev. E. N., The Temperance Eeformation connected with the 

revival of religion and the introduction of the millennium. 

New York, 1838. 
Nott, Bev. Eliphalet, Lectures on Bible temperance. (Delivered at 

Schenectady.) New York, 1838-1839. 
Kemp, John, The difficult arrest, fair trial, just sentence, and un- 
fortunate liberation of Sir John Barleycorn (pp. 15). Boston, 

about 1840. 
Sewell, Prof. Thomas , The pathology of drunkenness ; or, the 

physical effects of alcoholic drinks, etc. Albany, New York, 

1841. 
Gale, James, A long voyage in a leaky ship ; or, forty years' cruise 

in the sea of intemperance, being an account of some of the 

principal incidents in the life of an inebriate. Written by 

himself. Cambridgeport, 1842. 
Gough, John B., An autobiography. Boston, 1845. 
Clark, J. E., The present position and aims of the temperance 

enterprise. (Prize essay.) New York, 1847. 
Bouton, N., History of the temperance reform in Concord. Concord, 

1848. 
Kitchel, Bev. Harvey J)., An appeal to the people for the suppres- 
sion of the liquor traffic. (Prize essay.) New York, 1848. 
Marsh, Bev. John, A discourse on the extent and evils of the 

Sunday liquor traffic in cities. New York, 1848. 
Warren, J. G., The physiological effects of alcoholic drinks. 

Boston, 1848. 
Jewett, Charles, Speeches, etc., on temperance. Boston, Mass., 

1849. 
Eemarks on the use of alcohol for the preparation of medicines. 

Boston, 1849. 
Alger, William B., The facts of intemperance and their claims on 

the public action of the people. Boston, 1852. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 535 

Armstrong, Lehheus, The Temperance Reformation : its history, etc. 

New York, 1853. 
Brown, Thurlow W., Why I am a temperance man. A series of 

letters to a friend, together with tales and sketches from 

real life and hearthstone reveries. New York, 1853. 
Youmans, Dr. Edward L., Alcohol and the constitution of man. 

New York, 1854, 12mo. 142 pp. 
Hammond, Br. William H., The physiological action of alcohol 

and tobacco upon the human organism, (American Journal 

of Medical Science, October.) New York, 1856. 
Alden, H. M., Eleusinia. (Atlantic Monthly, September, 1859 ; 

August, 1860.) Boston, Mass., 1859-1860. 
Andrews, Jolm (Governor of Massachusetts), The errors of pro- 
hibition. American Journal of Medical Science, July, 1859. 
Sherrill, E., A temperance medical lecture on the injurious and 

dangerous effects of stimulants and alcohol in many states of 

disease. New York, 1859. 
Trail, Br. Russell T., The true temperance platform ; or, an 

exposition of the fallacy of alcoholic medication. New York , 

1864. 

, , Alcoholic medication. New York, 1866, 

, Digestion and dyspepsia. . New York, 1880. 

Cox, Edward, Abstinence ; its influence upon the health, morals, 

and success in life, of the young. (Prize essay.) Hobart 

Town, 1866. 
Flint, Br. Austin, The physiology of man. (On water, which 

includes the alcohol question. Vol. ii. pp. 102-114.) New 

York, 1866. 
Bay, Albert, Methomania : a treatise on alcoholic poisoning. 

Boston, 1867. 
Alden, E., Medical uses of alcohol. Boston, 1868. 
Andrew, James H., Temperance in the American congress. New 

York, 1868. 
Barton, James, Smoking and drinking. Boston, 1868. 
Story, Br. Charles A., Alcohol : its nature and effects. New York, 

1868. 
Fishe, Prof John, Tobacco and alcohol. New York, 1869. 
Beering, Thomas W., Intemperance ; its financial, physical, and 

moral evils, and its causes and remedies. New York, 1870. 
Beard, Br. George M., Stimulants and narcotics. New York, 1871. 
Patton, Rev. William, The laws of fermentation: the wines of 

the ancients. New York, 1872. 
Burr, C, On insanity and inebriety. New York, 1874. 
Budley, Col. T. G., Alcohol: its combinations and adulterations, 

and physical effects. New York, 1874. 
Edmunds, Br. James, The medical use of alcohol. New York, 
1874. 



586 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Hitchcock, The entailments of alcoliol. Lansing, 1874. 

Evans, Charles, A series of essays on the evils of intemperance. 

Cincinnati, 1875. 
Morse, Dr., Eeport on dipsomania and drunkenness. (Ohio State 

Medical Society, Columbus, June 10-12, 1873.) Drayton, 

Ohio, 1875. 
Po^(;eZ?, -Frec^eric^, Bacchus dethroned. (Prize Essay.) New York, 

1875. 
Weeden, William B., The morality of prohibitory liquor laws. 

Boston, Mass., 1875. 
Kellogg, Dr. J. H., The physical, moral, and social effects of 

alcoholic poison as a beverage and as a medicine. Bar tie 

Creek, Michigan, 1876. 
Ringer, Sydney, Handbook of therapeutics. New York, 1876. 
Massachusetts Board of Health Eeports for 1871, 1873, 1875, 1877. 

Boston, Mass. 
Hargreaves, Dr. William, Our wasted resources. New York, 1876. 

, Alcohol and man. London, 1881. 

Dunn, J. B., Moody's talks on temperance^ New York, 1877. 
Pitman, Rohert C, Alcohol and the state. New York, 1877. 
Kennedy, Dr. J. O., Alcohol : its effects on health, its remedial 

applications in disease. {Cincinnati Lancet and Observer, xx.) 

Cincinnati, 1877. 
Stephens, C. R., Inebriety or vini morbus, a disease, and to be 

treated as such. Salem, 1877. 
Tucker, W. G., Alcohol : is it a food ? Albany, 1877. 
Centennial Temperance Volume : a memorial of the International 

temperance conference, held in Philadelphia, June, 1876. New 

York, 1877. 
Barton, J. R., Dipsomania : its medical and legal aspects. (Quarterly 

Journal of Inebriety.) Hartford, 1879. 
Chenery, E., Alcoholism. Eolations of alcoholism to other forms 

of disease. {Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.) Hartford, 1879. 
Comings, B. N., Mental strain, and heredity a cause of inebriety. 

{Quarterly Journal of Inebriety.) Hartford, 1879. 
Da Costa, J. M., Dementia foUowmg alcoholism. {Medical and 

Surgical Reporter.) Philadelphia, 1879. 
Fowler, Harriet P., Vegetarianism the radical cure for intemper- 
ance. New York, 1879. 
Greenfield, W. S., Alcohol : its use and abuse. New York, 1879. 
Lykke, Dipsomania. Translated by C. E. Froelich. {Quarterly 

Journal of Inebriety?) Hartford, 1879. 
Wilson, Joseph (Wq^. Dir. U.S. Navy), Naval hygiene. Human 

health, and the means of preventing disease. Philadelphia, 

Pa., 1879. 
Clothers, T. D., Clinical studies of inebriety. {Medical and 

Surgical Re'porter.) Philadelphia, 1880. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 537 

Joyce, Hon. Charles E. (U.S. Kep. of Vermont), The alcoholic 

liquor traffic. New York, 1880. 
Petithan, Law against alcoholism, and to institute temperance 

asylums. The Alienist and Neurologist, St. Louis, Missouri, 

1880. 
Cerebral trance, or loss of consciousness and memory in inebriety. 

(^Quarterly Journal of Inebriety^ Hartford, Conn., 1880. 
Speech in the House of Rep. Washington, D. C, April 3rd, 1880. 
Colman, Julia, Alcohol and hygiene : an elementary text-book for 

schools, (pp. 231.) New York, 1881. 
Ellis, John, The wine question in the light of the New Dispensa- 
tion. New York, 1882. 
Hubbard, Frederick H., The opium habit, and alcoholism. New 

York, 1882. 
Rodger s, R. V., Drink, drinkers, and drinking : laws and history ; 

intoxicating drinks. Albany, 1882. 
Wheeler, Rev. Henry, Methodism and the temperance reformation. 

Cincinnati, 1882. 
Raer, Dr. (of Berlin), Insanity from alcohol. (Translated by 

Dr. Carl Seller, of Philadelphia, Pa., in American Psychological 

Journal, October.) Philadelphia, Pa., 1883. 
Buckham, Dr. T. R., Insanity considered in its medico-legal 

relations. Philadelphia, Pa., 1883. 
Dorchester, Rev. Daniel, Latest drink sophistries ; sophistries versus 

total abstinence. Boston, 1883. 
Everts, Orpheus, What shall we do for the drunkard ? New York, 

1883. 
Field, Rev. Leon, Oinos. New York, 1883. 

Mann, Dr. Edward, A Manual of psychological medicine. (In- 
temperance as cause of insanity, p. 56 ; Dipsomania, pp. 

354-377.) New York, 1883. 
Mason, Dr. Lewis D., Alcoholic insanity. (Lecture.) New York, 

1883. 
Spitzka, Dr. E. C, Insanity : its classification, diagnosis, and 

treatment. New York, 1883. 
Blair, Senator Henry M., Alcohol in politics. (North American 

Review, January, 1884.) New York, 1884. 



GERMANY. 

Schrick, Dr. Michad, Yerzeychnuss der ausgebrannten Wasser. 

Augspurg, 1483. 
, Von den geprannten wassern in welcher mass man die zu den 

gelydern . . . prauchen soil. 1483. 



538 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Der ZutrinTcer. Erffordt, 1512. 

Pauli, Johann, Schimpff und Ernst. 1518. 

Franck, G., Vom grewlichen Laster der Trunkenlieit. 1521. 

Stromer, Eeinrich, Decreta aliquot medica . . . Utrum ebrietas 

vino contracta, capitis . . . morbus, etc. Lipsise, 1531. 
Opsopoeus, Vincentius, De Arte Bibendi libri tres. Norimbergse, 

1536. (A most bitter satire, by B. Koch, under the nom de 

plume of Opsopoeus. It went through several editions, and 

was translated also, and had much to do with making a 

temperance sentiment.) 
Weidensee, Eberhard, Ein Sermon von dsm grausamen nnd un- 

menschlichen laster des volsauffens. Magdeburg, 1540. A 

most fervid appeal against drink. 
Willichius, Problemata de Ebriorum affectibus. Francofurti, 1543. 
Friedrich. Wider den Saufteuffel. Leipzig, 1552. 
De generibus ebriosorum et ebrietate vitanda, cui adjecimus de 

meretricium in suos amatores et concubinarum in sacerdotes 

fide qnestiones. Erffordt, 1557. 
Dodoeus, B., Historia vitis vinique et stirpium nonnullarum 

aliarum. Colonise, 1580. 
Basch, Johann, Weinbuch Das ist vom Baw und Pflege u. Brauche 

des Weins, etc. Miinchen, 1581. 
Mayr, J., Von dem schweren Misbrauch des Weins. Coin, 1582. 
Horn, G., Hierampelas, oder von dem in der heiligen Schrift 

wohlbekannten Weine u. Weinbau. Schmalkalden, 1585. 
Seidelius, Bruno, De Ebrietate. Hanovise, 1594. 
Khunrath, Conrad, Medulla destillatoria et medica renovata et 

augmentata, etc. 1601. 

, Destiller-und Arzneykunst. Leipzig, 1703. 

Gretser, J., Mantissa de vino myrrhato et vasis myrrhinis. 

Ingolstadii, 1608. 
Cornarius, Janus, Theologise vitis viniferse (libri iii.) Heidelbergse, 

1614. 
Magirus, J., De Vinolentia ejusque mails. Francofurti, 1618. 
Hauptmann, A., Insignes aliquot Viticulturse errores. Norimbergiee, 

1642. 
Guiens, C., Vitis Historia. Hal^, 1648. 
Bruyerinus Campegius, J. B., Cibus medicus, sive de re cibaria 

libri xxii. (Wine, p. 699, etc.) Norimbergiaj, 1659. 
Erherfeldt, H., Disputatio de spiritibus ex vegetabilibus per 

fermentationem paratis, Helmstadii, 1674. 
Waldschmidf, Diss, de ebrietate et insolentibus aliquot ejus 

affectibus. Giessen, 1677. 
Itfig, J. F., Disputatio de temulentia. Frees, M. Eltmuller. 

Lipsise, 1678. 
Hannemann, J., Dissertatio de usu et abusu inebriaminum. 

Norimbergas, 1679. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY. 539 

Schmidt, J. A., Dissertatio de Cerevisia ut est alimentum. Jenae, 

1680. 
East, Ebrietas medice considerata. Regiomont, 1682. 
CaUnus, C. G., Yitis ac viticulturse ortum. Jense, 1679. 
Wedel, G. W., Diss, de vini dalcis plenis. Jena, 1692. 
Closius, S., De Spiritus vini. Jen^, 1697. 
Goeckel, E., Curieuse Beschreibung des anno 1694 — 1695 u 1696, 

durch das Silberglatt versiissten samen Weins und der davon 

enstandenen neuen und vormals unerhorten Weinkrankbeit. 

Ulm, 1697. 
Wedel, G. W., Dissertatio de spiritu vini. Jenee, 1697. 
Kolaii, Joh., Diss. Jud. circa Ebrietatem. Halse Magdeburg, 1698. 
Breyer, L. F., Dissertatio de potu Aquarum ardentium. Tubingse, 

1698. 
Jdgersmidt, J. V., Der in denen durch die Silberglatte bestricbenen 

Weinen verborgte, nun aber entlarvte Mercurius. Ulm, 1699. 
Kurze Beschreibung und Unterricht des Weinbaues, nebst dem 

Weinarz. Dresden, 1700. 
Gladhach, J. A., De Ebrietate assidua hydropis causa. Erfordise, 

1701. 
Noel, N. B., Mors in vitro, seu lethifera vini adusti damna ex sola 

ejusdem astringendi virtute comprobata. Francofurti, 1709. 
Sincerus, J., Von dem mit Silberglatt verfalschten Weine. Frank- 
fort, 1709. 
Be Pre, J. T., Vom Branch und Missbrauch des Branntweins. 

Frankfurt und Leipzig, 1723. 
Alhrecht, J. G., De spirituum ardentium usu et abusu diaetetico. 

Halse, 1732. 
Vogel, S. S., De spirituum ardentium usu et abusu diaetitico. 

Halle, Magdeburg, 1732. 
Zeidler, Universal Lexicon. (Art. Alcohol.) Halle und Leipzig, 

1732. 
Neumann, Caspar, Lectiones Publicse von vier subjectis diaeteticis, 

nehmlich von den . . . Getrancken vom Thee, Caffee, Bier 

und Wein, etc. Leipzig, 1735. 
Papen, G. E., De Spiritu vini ej usque usu et abusu. Gottingge, 1735. 
Alberti, De fermentatione vinosa. Halee, 1736. 
Eeinick, J. JE., De potu vinoso digestionem impedimente magis. 

Argentorali, 1736. 
Gohrs, J. Chr., Dissertatio de ebrietate foeminarum. Halee Mag- 

deburgicse, 1737. 
Keller, S., De poculis sanitatis, poculis morborum et mortis. 

Vitembergse, 1738. 
Nauheimer, Joannec J., Dissertatio . . . de sobrietate. Enfordise, 

1741. 
Mauchhardt, B. B., Dissertatio de Vini turbidi clarificatione. 

Tubingise, 1742. 



540 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Abrahamovitz, De Spirituosorum liquorum noxa atque utilitate. 

HalfB, 1743. 
Matthison, H. (7., Dissertatio de Vinis ly thagyrio infectis. Gryphis- 

waldi^, 1745. 
Beck, Eenricus Jacobus, Dissertatio de Ebrietate. Heidelbergse, 

1746. 
Bor, Abhandlung von der Trunkenlieit. Stralsund, 1747. 
Knoll, J. G. G., Yon des schadlichen Wirkungen des ubermassigen 

Branntweintrinkens. Wernigerode, 1750. 
Quelmalz, S. T., Programma de Vinis magonisatis. Leipzig, 1751. 
Weber, J., Commentatio juridica de crimine adulteratorum vinorum. 

Francofurti et Lipzise, 1751. 
Buechner, A. E., Dissertatio de vino ut medicina et veneno. Halse, 

1756. 
Grotian, J. A., Giildene Kunst Branntwein zu brennen. Nord- 

hausen, 1761. 
Scherer, J. A., De Genesi Ebrietatis. Jenee, 1763. 
Gmelin, P. F., De noxis ex abusn potuum spirituosorum. Tubingiee, 

1767. 
Hippocrates, Hippokrates Werke. Aus dem griechischen iibersetzt 

(von J. F. K. Grimm). Altenburg, 1781-92. 
Gartheuser, F. A., Abhandlungen iiber die Verfalscbungen der 

Weine, welche der Gesundheit schadlich sind. Giessen, 

1773. 
Linehe, P. G., De Noxis ex potu disserit. Lipsiee, 1774. 
Anleitung zur verbesserung der Weine in Teutscbland. Frankfurt 

und Leipzig. 1775. 
Eagen, E., Abhandlungen, chemiscben und physikalischen Inbalts. 

Konigsberg, 1778. 
Eemstein, T. G., Causa Inebriandi sprituum vinosorum. Teutoburgi 

ad Khenum, 1780. 
Ploncquet, W. G., Warnung an das Publicum vor einem in 

mancben Brannt weine enthlialtenem Gif'te sammt den Mitteln 

es zu entdecken u. auszuscbeiden. Tiibingen, 1780. 
Frank, Johann P., System einer voUstandigen mediciniscben 

Polizey. Mannheim, 1784. 
Martins, E. W., Etwas iiber die Weine und ibre Verfalscbungen. 

Eegensburg, 1789. 
Ackermann, J. G. G., Kegimen sanitatis Salerni sive Scholge 

Salernitan^ de conservanda bona valetudine pr£ecepta. (Wine, 

p. 157.) Stendaliai, 1790. 
Pereira, J., Handbuch der Heilmittellehre. Yon. E. Buchheim 

(B. 11, p. 130, Bier). 1790 (?). 
Prcetorius, K. G., Beantwortung der Preisfrage ; ob es besser, das 

Bier unter obrigkeitlicber Aufsicht oder in Privatheusern 

brauen zu lassen ? Berlin, 1791. 
Eoffmann, Garl A., Ueber den Hopfen und cbemiscbe Untersuchung 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 541 

desselben in Eiichsicht seiner Anwendung zum Bierbrauen. 

Erfurt, 1792. 
Fischer, Friedrich C. J., Geschichte des teutschen Handels. 

Hannover, 1793. 
Jcenichs, W., De spiritus vini usu et abusu. G-oettingse^ 1793. 
Trommsdorff, J. B., Journal der Pharmacie. Bd. xli. p. 108, etc. 

Article by von Baptist Ziz. Leipzig, 1793-1817. 
Qmelin, J. F., Gesch. der Cbemie seit dem Wiederaufieben der 

Wissenschaften bis an ende des 18th Jabrhunderts. (Brandy, 

Bd. 1, p. 70, etc.) Gottingen, 1797-99. 
Khon, A., A nimia spiritus vini ingurgitatione mors repentina. 

Miscell Acad. nat. cur. Dec 3, an v, vi. p. 166. (1797.) 
Boessig, C. O., Die Geschichte der Q^konomie der vorziiglichsten 

Lander u. Volker. Leipzig, 1798. 
Anton, Carl G., Geschichte der Teutschen Landwirtschaft. Gorliz, 

1799-1802. 
Huf eland, Christopli W., System der Practischen Heilkunde. 

Jena und Leipzic, 1800. 

, Ueber die Vergiftung durch Branntwein. Berlin, 1802, 

Sclierer, A. N., AUgemeines Journal der Chemie. (Wine.) Leipzig, 

1800. 
Neuenhahn, Carl C. A., Die Branntweinbrennerei nach theoretischen 

praktischen Grundsatzen. Erfurt, 1802-1803. 
SicJcler, Friedrich K. L., AUgemeine Geschichte der Obstkultur 

von den Zeiten der Urwelt an bis auf die gegenwartigen herab. 

Bd. 1, Frankfurt am Main, 1802. 
Kanhlen, L. J., Ueber den diatetischen Gebrauch des Branntweins. 

Koln, 1803. 
Biem, Johann, Die Getranke der Menschen, pp. 247, etc. Dresden, 

1803. 
Gehlen, Adolph F., AUgemeines Journalder Chemie. (Wine.) 1804. 
Wurtzer, J., Bemerkungen iiber den Branntwein, in politischer, 

technologischer und medicinischer Hinsicht. Coin, 1804. 
Wine Adulterations with Litharge. Beckmann Beitrag;e zur 

Geschichte der Erfindungen (957, f. 27, III. Bd. s.). 1782-1805. 
Brumbey, J. A., Com. de adulterationibus spiritus frumenti sanitati 

infectis. Helmstadii, 1806. 
Hoffhauer, Johann C, Die Psychologic in ihren Hauptanwendungen 

auf die Eechtspflege. Halle, 1808. 
Hubhe, C. J. H., Ueber die Schadlichkeit des Branntweins, als eines 

gewohnlichen Getrankes. In Yerhandlungen und Schriften 

der Hamburger Gesellschaft (T. viii. p. 531), 1808. 
Frank, Joseph, Praxeos Medicinge universge pra3cepta. Lipsise, 

1811-1818. 
Remer, W. H. G., Lehrbuch der polizeilich-gerichtlichen Chemie, 

Helmstadt, 1812. (pp. 212, etc.) Helmstadt, 1812. 
Zosimus, Fanopolitanus, Zosimi Panopolitani de Zythorum con- 



542 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

fectione fragmentum nunc primum Grsece et Latine editum. 

Accedit Historia Zythorum sive Cerevisiarum quarum apud 

veteres mentio fit. Scripsit C. Gr. Gruner. Solisbaci, 1814. 
Munch, Al., Abhandlung liber dieWirkungen der Weins. Giessen, 

1815. 
Lobenstein Lobel, E. X., Die Anwendung imd Wirkung der'Weine 

und deren Verfalschungec. Lipzeig and Altenburg, 1816. 
Oherbreyer, De, Jus Potandi. Heilbronn, 1816. 
Rosenmuller, Ernst F. C, Das alte und neue Morgenland; oder 

Erlauterungen den heiligen Schrift aus der natiirlicben 

Beschaffenheit den Sagen, Sitten und Gebrauchen des Morgen- 

landes. Ed. I. p. 817. Leipzig, 1818-1820. 
Menard, J. Kl., Der Branntwein in diatetischer und medicinisch- 

polizeilischer. Hinsicht, Mainz, 1817. 
JRUter, G. IL, Der Weinlehre. Mainz, 1817. 
BruM- Cramer, C. von, Ueber die Trunksucht und eine rationelle 

Heilmethode derselben. Berlin, 1819. 
Henke, A., Ueber Gerichtsarztliche Beurtheilurig der Trunkenbeit 

und Trunksucht, etc. Bamberg, 1820. 
Kopp, Beob. im Gebiete der ausiibenden Heilkunde. Frankfurt, 1821. 
Schlcefel, J. H., De ratione qua potus spirituosi in organismum 

agunt, Halffi, 1821. 
Kohring, J. F. de, Dissertatio de delirium tremens. Berlin, 1822. 
Goeden, De delirium tremens. Berlin, 1825. 
Ebel, Fridericus Agustus, De spirituosorum imprimis immodice 

haustorum effectu. Berol, 1826. 
Weigel, Car. J., Dissertatio de delirii trementis pathologia. 

Leipzig, 1826. 
Wurzer, F. J. R., De Alcobole. Marburgicattorum, 1826. 
Elwert, Wilhelm, Medicinische Beobacbtungen. Hildesheim, 1827. 
Barkhausen, Georg^ Beobacbtungen iiber den Sauferwahnsinn. 

Bremen, 1828. 
Clarus, J.fi. A., Beitrage zur Erkenntnissund Beurtheilung zweifel- 

bafter Seelenzustande. Leipzig, 1828. 
Fischer, A. T., Die Nachtbeil, den die Yerfalscbung der Biere und 

Branntweine anf Geist und Korper aiissert. Dresden, 1829. 
Lenz, Ueber Trunksucht {Rust Magazine, 1829). 
Gast, T. X, De Cerevisia. Dissertatio Inauguralis. Monachii, 1830. 
Speyer, Gutachten iiber die plotzlicher, wahrscheinlich durch iiber- 

massigen Genuss des Branntweins herbeigefiihrte, Todesart 

dreier Personen. (Henke's Zeitschrift, 1. xx. p. 27.) 1830. 
Friedreich, J. B., Allgemeine Diagnostik der psychischen Krank- 

heiten. Wiirtzburg, 1832. 
Gatterer, Christoph W. J., Literatur des Weinbaues aller Nationen. 

Heidelberg, 1832. 
Hunefeld, Friedrich L., Die Chemie der Rechtspflege oder Lehrbuch 

der polizeilich-gerichtlichen Chemie. Berlin, 1832. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 543 

Dierbach, Joliann H.^ Flora Mythologica, oder Pflanzenkunde in 

Bezug auf Mythologie imd Symbolik der Grriechen und Komer. 

Frankfurt am Main, 1833. 
Lippich, Fr. W., Grrundziige zur Dipsobiostatik, etc. Laibach, 

1834. 
Krauss, Carolus, De spirituosis e tuberibus Solani confectis. Berolini, 

1835. 
Alters, Johann F. E., Beobacbtungen auf dem Gebiete der Patho- 
logic, etc. Bonn, 1836-1838. 
Willing, E., Bemerkungen iiber die in Handel vorkommenden 

Branntwein-Arten, etc. Holzminden, 1837. 
Most, Georg F., Ausfiihrliche Encyklopadie der gesammten 

Staatsarzneikunde. (Bd. 1, p. 652.) Leipzig, 1838-40. 
Sobernheim, Joseph F., and J. F. Simon, Handbuch der praktischen 

Toxikologie. Berlin, 1838. 
Botticher, J. S., Ueber den Branntwein-Grenuss, etc. Hannover, 

1839. 
, Greschicbte der Massigkeitsgesellschaften in den Norddeutschen 

Landesstaaten, etc. Hanover, 1841. 
Liehetrut, Friedricli, Schaden und Nutzen des Branntweinstrinken. 

Potsdam, 1839. 
Eoesch, Carl H., Der Missbraucb geistiger Gretranke in pathologi sober, 

tberapeutischer, mediciuiscli-polizeilicher und gerichtlicher. 

Hinsicbt. Tubingen, 1839. 
Meinecke, G. W. F., Ueber die Wirkung geistigen Getranke, etc. 

Oldenburg, 1840. 
Otto, Friedricli J., Lebrbuck der rationellen Praxis der land 

wirthschatflichen Grewerbe. Braunschweig, 1840. 
Wustenfeld, F., G-eschichte der Arabischen Aerze u. JSTaturforscher. 

Nach. den Quellen bearbeitet. Gottingen, 1840. 
Schmidt, J., De Specifica, quse abusu potuum Spirituosorum exoritur 

morbosa dispositione, etc. Berolini, 1841. 
Mitscherlich, Carl G., Wirkung der Alkohols und Aethers auf den 

Organismus. (Schmidts Jahrb. t. xl. p. 151.) 1843. 

, Lehrbuch der Arzneimittellehre. Berlin, 1847-1861. 

Singowitz, Die Geistesstorungen in ihren organischen Beziehungen, 

etc. Berlin, 1843. 
Boffbauer, J. M., Die psychischen Krankheiten, etc. Berlin, 1844. 
Backer, Friedrich W., Ueber eine Ursache des Branntweingenusses. 

Braunschweig, 1845. 

, Beitrage zur Heilkunde, etc. Crefeld, 1849. 

Fliiring, August E., Bier ist Gift! Leipzig, 1845. 

Griesinger, Wilhelm, Die Pathologic und Therapie der psychischen 

Krankheiten. Stuttgart, 1845. 
Carlowifz, Georg H. von, Versuch einer Culturgeschichte des 

Weinbaues, von der Urzeit bis auf unsere Zeiten. Leipzig, 

1846. 



544 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Kopp, Hermann, Die Geschichte der Chemie. Braunschweig, 1847. 
Oesterlen, Friedrich, Handbuch der Heilmittellehre. Tiibingen, 

1847. 
Klencke, P. F. E., Untersiichungen iiber die Wirkiingsweite des 

Branntweingenusses auf den lebenden Organismus. Eine 

wissen schaftliche Antwort, etc. Braunschweig, 1848, 
Klenche, Hermann, Die Yerfalschung der Nahrungs-Mittel und 

Getranke, etc. Bd. 5, 6, 7, Alkohol s. 283-308. Brantwein 

Liqueure und Bier 308-336. Bierliefe, 336-337. Ale, 378-421. 

Wein, 701-793. Leipzig, 1856-1858. 
Bock, Carl E., Lehrbuch der pathologischen Anatomic und Diag- 

nostik. Leipzig, 1849. 
Konig, J., Die menscblichen Nahrungs und Genussmittel. Berlin, 

1850. 
, Jahresberichte des Untersuchungsamtes fiir Lebensmittel, etc. 

Miinster, 1878. 
, Chemie der menscblichen Nahrungs und Genussmittel. 

Berlin, 1879. Miinster, 1880. 
Moleschott, Jacob, Die Physiologic der Nahrungsmittel. Darmstadt, 

1850. 

, Physiologic der Nahrungs-Mittel. Giessen, 1859. 

Wagner, Ruddfli, Die Chemische Technologic. Leipzig, 1850. 
Schouw, Joakim F., Die Erde, die Pfianzen und der Mensch, etc. 

Leipzig, 1851. 
Nasse, Zur Therapie des Branntwein Missbrauchs. 1853. 

, Irrenfreund. 1870. 

Pauly, A., Eeal Encyclopadie der Classischen Alterthumswissen- 

schaft. (Bd. VI. Abth, 2 p. 2631.) Stuttgart, 1852. 
Schneider, F. C, Die Gerichtliche Chemie fiir Gerichtsartze und 

Juristen bearbeitet. (pp. 343, etc.) Wien, 1852. 
Volz, K. W., Beitrage zur Kulturgeschichte. Leipzig, 1852. 
Bonders, F. C, Die Nahrungs-stoffe. Grundlinien einer allgemeine 

Nahrungslehre. Aus den HoUandischen uebersetzt von Dr. 

Bergrath. Crefeld, 1853. 
Strata, Geographica. Greece cum versione reficta. Curantibus C. 

Miillero et F. Diibnero. Paris, 1853-1858. 
Jenner, Andreas L. 0., De alkoholismo chronico. (Academia 

Christiana Albertina Schriften . . . aus dem Jahre. Bd. 2. 

1854.) Kieliae, 1855. 
Klemr.n, Qustav Friedrich, Allgemeine Culturwissenschaft. (11 B. 

Einleitung, Das Feuer. die Nahrung, Getranke, Narcotica.) 

Leipzig, 1855. 
Virchow, Rudolph, Handbuch der speciellen Pathologic und 

Therapie. (Bd. ii., Abth 1, pp. 295, etc.) Erlangen, 1855. 
, Sammlung gemeinverstandlicher wissenschaftliche Yortrage. 

Herausgegeb. von K. Virschow und Frh. v. Holzendorff 

Berlin, 1868. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 545 

ChevalUer, A., Worterbuch. der Unvereinigung u. Verfalschungen 

der Nahrungs-Mittel, etc. Gottingen, 1856, 1857. 
I{esseI,Die alterthum iiblich geweseneu Metliodender Weinveredlung. 

Marburg, 1856. 
Petersen, Johann W., Gescbichte der deutscben Nationalneigung 

zum Truncke. Curiosa et Jocosa antiquoria ac nova 1. Stutt- 
gart, 1856. 
Jacohi, W., Experimentelle Untersucbungen iiber die Wirkung des 

Alcohols, etc. Inaugural Dissertation, Deutsche Klinik, 1857, 

No. 22, 26, 31, 34. Marburg, 1857. 
Liehig, Justus von, Poggendorff und Wobler, Handworterbucb der 

reinen und angewandten Chemie. (Brandy, pp. 493-526.) 

Braunschweig, 1857. 
Schuharth, Ernst L., Handbuch der technischen Chemie, etc. (Bier, 

Bd. iii. pp. 521, etc. (Brandy, 557, etc.) Berlin, 1851. 
TJlilemann, M., Handbuch der gesammte Agyptische Alterthum- 

skunde. (Bd. ii. p. 137.)_ Leipzig, 1857. 
Franque, Arnold von, Das delirium tremens. Miinchen, 1859. 
Lenz, Harold 0., Botanik der alten Griechen und Eomer. Gotha, 

1859. 
Phillijpe, A., Geschichte der Apoteker bei den wichtigsten Volkern, 

etc. (Discovery of Alcohol, p. 399.) Jena, 1859. 
Beich, Eduard, Die Nahrungs und Genussmittel kunde historisch, 

naturwissenschatich und hygienisch. 2 Bd. Gottingen, 1860. 
Franz, D., Alcohol quid in respiratione cordisque actione efficiat. 

Gryphiswaldias, 1862. 
Huseman, August, Handbuch der Toxicologia. Berlin, 1862. 
Cros, Action de I'alcool amylique sur I'organisme. (These pour le 

doctorat en medecine.) Strassbourg, 1863. 
Herzog, Xaver, ISTeueste Dranirmethode, oder probates mittel gegen 

die Trunk enheit. Luzern, 1863. 
Voelckel, P., Ueber den alcoholismus. Wurzburg, 1863. 
Qottloeber, F., De Alcoholis potionumque alcoholicarum usu et 

effectu. Berolini, 1864. 
Krieger, J. A., De Alcoholismo Chronico. Berolini, 1864. 
Zimmerman, Johann G., Von der Erfahrung in der Arzneykunst. 

(Bd. ii. p. 303, wein.) Zurich, 1864. 
Vogelsang, Eduardus, De Alcoholisme Chronico. Berolini, 1865. 
Moller, J., Ueber den Alkohol. Berlin, 1867. 
Schultze, Rudolph, Geschichte des Weins und der Trinkgelage, etc. 

Berlin, 1867. 
Brosius, Der Irrenfreund. 1868. 
Vamhery, Speisen u. Getranke im Ismaelitischen Oesten. Wester- 

manns illustrirlc Deutsche Monatshefte, 1868. 24 Band S. 

158. 1868. 
Bouvier, Cimibert J. M., Ueber die Wirkung Alkohols auf die 

Korpertemperature. Bonn, 1869. 

2n 



546 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Bouvier, Cunihert J. M., Pharmakologische Studien iieber den 

alkoliol. Berlin, 1872. 
Hdberkorn, Friedrich, Alkoholmisslorauch und Psycliosen. Disserta- 
tion. 1869. 
Hoche, Die Verfalschungen des Bieres : Vierteljabrscliift fiir 

gerichtliclie. Medicin, 1869. 
With, Carl, Ueber Dipsomanie. Inaugural Dissertation. Berlin, 

1869. 
Neuhauer, C, Cbemie des Weines. 1870. 
Wenzel. C. B., Einiges uber alcohol und seine wirkung. Leipzig, 

1870. 
JBolley, Pompejus J., Handbucb der technisch-cbemisclien Annlyse, 

V. Stahlschmidt bearbeitet. A.sclienanalysen von E. v. Wolff. 

1871 und 1880. 
, Handbuch der cbemiscben Technologie. (On essential oils, 

iv. i. p. 533.) Braunchweig, 1876. 
, Handbuch der technisch-chemischen Analyse v. Starscbmidt 

bearbeitet Aschenanalysen von E. V. Wolff. 1880. 
Stark, Carl, Die psycbische degeneration der Franzosichen Yolkes 

ihr patologischer character ihre symptomen und ursuchen. 

Stuttgart, 1871. 
Rabow, S., Ueber die Wirkung des alkohol auf die Korpertemperatur 

und den puis. Strassburg, 1872. 
Bose, Edmund, Delirium tremens und Delirium traumaticum. 

Stuttgart, 1872. 
Schmidt, F., Ueber die pbysiologischen Wirkungen und die 

therapeutische Vervendung des alcohols. Halle, 1873. 
Ballzer, Leonhard, Die Nahrungs und Genussmittel des Menscben 

in ihrer cbemiscben Zusammensetzung und pbysiologischen 

Bedeutung. Nordhausen, 1874. 
Heuber, Die Luetische Erkrankuno; der Hirnarterien. 1874. 
Sandmann, P., Eine experimentalstudie iieber die Wirkung des 

Alcobol und Aether auf die circulation. Griefswald, 1874. 
V. Kraft, Irrenfieund. 1874. 
Hotzen, Otto, Die Erblicbkeit. Leipzig, 1875. 
Krafft-Ehing, B. von, Lehrbucb der gericbtlichen Psychopatbologie. 

Stuttgart, 1875. 
, Lehrbucb der Psychiatric auf Klinischer Grundlage fiir 

Praktische Arzte und Studirende. Stuttgart, 1883. 
Schmidt, A., Die Ausseheidung des Weingeistes durcb die Respira- 
tion. Centralblatt der Med. Wissensch. Berlin, 1875. 
Binz, Carl, Ausschiedung des Weingeistes durch nieren und 

Lungen. (Arch. f. exper. Path. u. pharmacol.) Leipzig, 1877. 
Liebermann, Leo, Anleitung zur chemischen Untersuchungen. Stutt- 
gart, 1877. 

, Chemische Praxis. Stuttgart, 1883. 

Beitlechner, C, Die Analyse des Weines. 1877. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 547 

StoUner, Trrenfreimd. 1877. 

Taguet, Ueber die erblichea Folgen der Alcoholismus. {Ann, Med. 

Psych., July.) 1877. 
Yvon, Salicylsauie im Weine. (Journ. Pharm. Chem., p. 593). 

1877. 
Baer, A., Der Alcoholismus, seine verbreitimg, etc. Berlin, 1878. 
, Ueber Trimksucht und Yerbrechen. (Arch./. Psych., x. p. 231.) 

Berlin, 1880. 
Geissler, E., Eia Beitrag zur Frage der Verfalschung der Lebens- 

mittel. 1878. 
Reischauer, C, Chemie d. Bieres. 1878. 
Schmid, W., Anleitung zu sanitarisch und polizeilicli chemichen 

Untersuchimgen. 1878. 
Schnacke, O. E. A., Worterbnch der Priifungen verfalschter, verun- 

reinigter nnd imitirter Waaren. Gera, 1878. 
Wittstein, G. C, Tasdienbuch der Nahrungs u. Geniissmittelehre. 

1878. 
Bericlit des Vorstandes iiber die Aiisfiihrung friilierer Vereins- 

bescbliisse (Verein der deutscben Irreiiaizte) emeine Trin- 

kerfrageiir Staatsaufsicht der Irrenanstalteu. {Allgemeine 

ZeiUchrift f. Psychiatric, etc. Bd. xxxvi. p. 733.) Berlin, 

1879. 
Dietzsch, 0., Die wicbtigsten Nabrungsmittel iind Getranke. 1879. 
Hilger, A., Die wicbtigsten Nahrungs und Genussmittel wesent- 

liche Bestandstbeile, verfalscbungen nebst Priifiuig. 1879. 
Stark, Carl, Die pbyschiscbe Degeneration. Binz Griindzuge der 

Arzneimittellelire. 1879. 
Einundvierzigster Jabresbericbt der Entbaltsamkeits Gesellschaft 

des Danziger Landkreises. 1879-1880, Konigsberg, 1880. 
Eirschlinq, B., Besprecbungen einger der wicbtigsten Kabrungs- 

mittel. 1880. 
Samuel, S., Allgemeine Patbologie. Stuttgart, 1880. 
Galle, T., Uiiber die Beziebungen des Alcobolismus Zur Epileptic. 

(Inaue. Dissert.) Berlin, 1881. 
Voigt, C. v.. Physiologic des allg. Stoffwecbsels und der Ernabrung. 

(L. Hermann's Handbucb der Pbysiologie, Bd. vi. 1 th.) 

Leipzig, 1881. 
Ortloff, Die Nahrungs und Genusmittelverkebr. Weimar, 1882. 
Palm, P., Die wicbtigsten und gebrauchlicbsten meuscblicben 

Nahrungs — Genussmittel und Getranke. 1882. 
Pettenkofer, Max von, Handbucb der Hygiene und der Gewer- 

bekrankbeiten. (Contributed by a number of the principal 
physicians in Germany. Edited by Prof. M. V. Pettenkofer 
and Prop. H. V. Ziem.ssen.) Leipzig, 1882. 
Von Speyr, Die Alcdlischen Geisteskrankbeiten im Basler Irren- 

hause, etc. Berlin, 1882. 
Bodldnder, Guido, Pflugers Arch.f. Physiologie. Bd. 32. Sept., 
1883. 



548 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Falch, Yergiftung durch alkohol und alcoholisclie Getranke. 

Handb. der specellen Pathologie, etc. 1883. 
Harnack, Erich, Lehrbuch du Arzaeimittelehre imd Arzneiverord- 

nungslehre. (Founded on Buchheim's Arzneimittellebre, 

3rd ed. vqI. i.) Hamburg und Leipzig, 1883. 
Konig, J., Die menschlichen Nahrungsund Genussmittel. (Vol. ii. 

Die Alcoholischen Getranke, pp. 449-600.) Berlin, 1883. 
Buetz, Otto, Wie lassen sich Verfaiscbungen d. Nabrungs Genuss 

und Consumarticle leicbt und . sicber nacbweisen. Neuwied 

und Leipzig, 1883. 
Wolfers, Fflugers, Arcb. f. Pbysiologie. Bd. 32. Jan., 1883. 
Ziemssen, H. von, Handbucb der AUgemeine Therapie. 1 B. 

(Article by Prof. Bauer.) Leipzig, 1883. 
Kornfeld, Hermann, Handbucb der Gericbtlicben Medicin in 

Beziebung zu der Gezetsgebung Deutscblands und des 

Auslandes. (Alkobol, s. 241.) Stuttgart, 1884. 
Eirsch, E., Die Trunksucbt und ihre Bekamfung eine Denkscbrift 

Oberbausen. 1884. 
Nenchi, Correspondenz fiir Scbweitzer Aerze. N. 5. 1884. 



FRANCE. 



Stephanus, Pater C, Yinetum, in quo varia vitium, uvarum, 

vinorum antiqua latina et vulgaria nomina item ea, qu£e ad 

vitium culturam ab antiquis expressa sunt ac recepta vocabula 

continetur. Parisiis, 1537. 
Columella, L. J. M., De re rustica (lib. x. 116). Parisiis, 1549. 
Diodorus, Sicuhts, Bibliotbeca bistorica (lib. i. 3, 4, rebus -i3Egyp- 

tiacis). Parisiis, 1549. 
Dioscorides, Pedacms, Libri octo Grsece et Latine. Parisiis, 1449. 
Plinius, Secundus Cuius, Naturalis bistorise (lib. xxxvii.). Parisiis, 

1549. 
Oratarolus, De vini natura. Argentorati, 1565. 
Alexis de Piedmont, Les Secrets du Seigneur Alexis Piedmontios 

augmentez d'un livre de distillation, avec figures des fourneaux. 

Paris, 1576. 
Lullus, Baimundus, Testamentum Novissumum. Argentorati, 

1571. 
Textor, V., Traicte de la nature du vin et de Tabus taut d'iceluy que 

des autres bre wages. Paris, 1604. 
Simeon, Seth, Antiocbeni volumen de alimentorum facultatibus 

juxta ordinem literarum digestum. Lutetiee Parisiorum, 1658. 
Cusson, N., and H. Mathiev, Ergo vinum vitse et statur£e detrabit. 

Parisiis (Paris), 1667. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 549 

Hoc, L. P., An aqua vit^ aqua mortis? (These pour doctorat.) 

Paris, 1743. 
Oseretskowsky, N., Specimen inaugurale de spiritu ardente ex lacte 

bubulo. Argentorali (Strasbnrg), 1778. 
Girtanner, Memoires sur I'irritabilite consideree comme principe 
de vie dans la nature organisee. (Journal de Physique.') 
Paris, Juin, 1780. 
Encvclopedie Methodique. Medicine, tome i., article Alcohol, 

"p. 646. Paris, 1782. 
Parmentier , A. A., Sur les eaux de vie considerees comme boisson 
a I'usage des troupes. In Ann. de Chim. (Serie I. lix. p. 5.) 
Paris, 1806. 
Canu, Ferdinand, Eecherches sur I'histoire, la nature, les effets et 
I'emploi hj'gieniques du vin et des liqueurs spiritiieuses. (These 
pour doctorat, No. 273.) Paris, 1815. 
Pages, C. F., Eecherches sur les phenomeoes produits par I'introduc- 
tion des liqueurs alcoholisees dans les voles digestives. Paris, 
1815. 
Versepuy, S., Essai sur les effects des liqueurs alcoholiques. Paris, 

1815. 
Fauconnier, J. B., De I'influence des liqueurs alcooliques sur le 

systeme nerveux. Paris, 1819. 
Eoyer, P., Memoire sur Delirium tremens. Paris, 1819. 
VauUegeard, F. A., Considerations generales sur les boissons 

alcoholiques. Paris, 1820. 
Gail, Jean F., Eecherches sur la nature du culte de Bacchus. 

Paris, 1821. 
Lohry, B. S., Essai sur I'influence des boissons alcoholiques con- 
sideree comme causa de maladies. Paris, 1821. 
P. L. F., Traite theorique et pratique de Vinification ou I'Art de 
faire du vin ... les procedes de fabrication des vins factices, 
etc. Paris, 1824. 
Rolle, Pierre N., Eecherches sur le Culte de Bacchus. Paris, 

1824. 
Peges, C. F., Eecherches sur les phenomenes produits par I'inti o- 
d action des liqueurs alcoolisees dans les voies digestives. 
(These pour doctorat, No. 128.) Paris, 1825. 
Pierron, Jean, Considerations chimiques the'rapeutiques et patho- 
logiques sur I'alcool. (These pour doctorat, No. 273.) Paris, 
1825. 
Orfila, Mathieu J. B., Traite des poisons. Alcool, tome ii. 
pp. 449-457. Paris, 1826. 

, Elements de Chimie, tome ii. pp. 163-177. Paris, 1831. 

, Traite de i^edecine legale. Wine Adulterations, tome iii. 

part ii. p. 996a. Paris, 1848. 
Barrion, Desire, Dissertation sur I'empoisonnement par I'alcool. 
(These pour doctorat, No. 62.) Montpellier, 1827. 



550 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Labarthe, E., De I'influence de I'alcohol dans la production des 

maladies, etc. Paris, 1829. 
Fsquirol, Jean E. D., Des maladies mentales. Paris, 1838. 
Eoyer-Collard, H., De I'usage et de I'abus des boissons fermentees. 

(These de concours.) Paris, 1838. 
Fuster, Joseph J. N., Des maladies de la France dans leurs rslpports 

avec les saisons ou histoire medicale et meteorologique de la 

France. Paris, 1840. 
Villerme, Louis Rene, Tableau de I'etat physique et moral des 

ouvriers. Paris, 1840. 
Flourens, Marie J. P., Kecherches experi mentales sur les proprietes 

et les fonctions du systeme nerveux. Paris, 1842. 
Buret, Antoine Eugene, De la misere des classes laborieuses en 

Angleterre et en France. Paris, 1840. 
Michea, Claude F., Du Delire des Sensations. Paris, 1846. 
Bouchardat et Sandras, De la digestion des boissons alcooliques et 

de leur role dans la nutrition. In Annales de chimie et de 

physique, 3e serie, tome xxi. p. 446. (Annuaire de therapeu- 

tique.) Paris, 1847. 
Lucas, Prosper, Traite philosophique et physiologique de I'heredite 

naturelle, etc. Paris, 1847-1850. 
Marcel, Claude N. S., De la folic causee par I'abus des boissons 

alcooliques. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1847. 
Bumeril et Demarquay, etc., Piecherches experimentales sur les 

anesthetiques. Paris, 1848. 
Tardieu, Auguste A., Observations medico-legales sur I'etat d'ivresse. 

Paris, 1848. 
Lahourf, L. A., Eecherches historiques et statistiques sur I'ln- 

temperance, etc. Paris, 1848. 
La Borderie Boulon Leonard E., De la pneumonic consecutive a 

I'intoxication alcoolique. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 

1849. 
Bergeret, Louis F. E., De I'abus des boissons alcooliques, de ses 

funestes effets sur I'homme et la societe. Lons-le-Sauluier, 

1851. 
Brierre, de Boismont, Alexandre, Des Hallucinations. Paris, 1852. 

, Du suicide et de la folie suicide. Paris, 1856. 

, L'Heredite au point de vue de la medecine legale. (Annales 

de Hygiene.) Paris, January, 1875. 
Buchet, Dictionnaire de la Conversation. (Article Alcohol.) Paris, 

1852. 
Beuregard, F. V., Causeries villageoises sur les dangers moraux 

physiques et sociaux qui resultent de I'abus des liqueurs fortes. 

Paris, 1853. 
Falret, J., Recherches sur la folie paralytique et les diverses 

paralysies generales. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1853. 
Lassegue, P., De I'alcoolisme chronique envisage dans ses rapports 



BIBLIOGKAPHY. 551 

avec la paralysie generale : Archives generales de medecine, 

5 serie, tome i. Paris, 1853. 
Beber, Leon, De ralcoolisme chroniqiie. (These pour doctorat.) 

Paris, 1853. 
Burdel, E., De i'lvrognerie et ses effets desastreux, etc. Bourges, 

1854. 
JDelhecq, O., De I'influence des boissons aclooliques sur la sante. 

Paris, 1854. 
FJourens, P., De la Longevite Humaine. Paris, 1854. 
Le Teatotalisme, Revue Britannique, tome ii. pp. 445, etc. Paris, 

1854. 
Neveu-Berottrie, V., De I'abus des liqueurs alcooliques. (These pour 

doctorat.) Paris, 1856, 
Bernard, Claude, Lecons sur les effets des substances toxiques et 

medicamenteuses, pp. 426-435. Paris, 1857. 
Compte Rendu du Congres de bienfaisance de Francfort-sur-Main. 

1857. 
Morel, Benedict A., Traite des Degenerescenses physiques, intel- 

lectuelles et morales de I'espece humaine. Paris, 1857. 

-. , Traite des maladies mentales. Paris, 1860. 

, L'Heredite morbide progressive. (Archives generales de 

medecine.) Paris, 1867. 
Farent-Diichatelet, Alexandre, J. B., De la Prostitution dans la 

ville de Paris. Paris, 1857. 
Nevremand, E. Be, De la necessite de reprimer I'ivresse. Paris, 

" 1858. 
Motet, A. A., Considerations generals sur I'Alcoolisme. (These 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1859. 
Tliomevf, Leon, Essai clinique sur Talcoolisme. (These pour 

doctorat.) Paris, 1859. 
Bourgeois, L. X, Les passions dans leurs rapports avec la sante et 

les maladies. (L' Amour.) Paris, 1860. 
Bemeaux, Note relative a I'influence de I'ivresse sur la fecondation. 

Academic des Sciences. Paris, 1860. 

, Sur I'Alcoolisme. Note a I'Academie des Sciences. Paris, 1860. 

Bezwarte, Aime, De I'influence de I'abus des alcooliques sur la 

marche et le traitement des maladies agues. (These pour 

doctorat.) Paris, 1860. 
L'Allemand, Ludger, Berrin, et Buroy, Du Role de I'Alcool, et des 

anesthesiques dans Torganisme. Paris, 1860. 
Leudet, Emile, Etude sur lictiere determine par I'abus des boissons 

alcooliques. Societe de biologic, 3e serie, tome ii. Paris, 

1860. 
, Des ul ceres de I'estomac a la suite des abus alcooliques 

Congres medico-chirurgique de Rouen. 1863. 
Bade, Victor A., De I'Aicoolisme. (These pour le concours.) 

Paris, 1860. 



552 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Bouchardat, AdoIpJie, Liqueurs fortes. (Entretiens populaires de 

I'association polytechnique.) 2e serie. Paris, 1860. 

, De l'usao;e et de I'abus des boissons fermeutees et des liqueurs 

fortes. (Conference de 1' Association polytechnique.) Annales ^ 

de therapeutique, p. 208. Paris, 1862. 

, L'eau-de-vie et ses dangers. Paris, 1863. 

, Traite d'hygiene publique et privee, basee sur I'etiologie." 

Paris, 1883. 
Issartier, F., De I'Alcoolisme moderne, etc. Paris, 1861. 
Lebeuf, V. F., Les Vins JSTouveaux du Midi et du Nord, ou Part 

de les couper, colorer, desacider, bonifier, vieillir, clarifier, etc. 

Paris, 1861. 
, Traite de I'amelioration des liquides tels que vins, alcools, 

eau-de-vie, liqueurs, etc. Paris, 1861. 
Robot, L.y Du cidre, de son analyse, de sa preparation, de sa con- 
servation et des falsifications, etc. {Annales d' Hygiene 

publique et de medecine legale, lie serie, tome xvi. p. 3.) 

Paris, 1861. 
Anselmer, Victor, De PEmpoisonnement par I'absinthe. 1862. 
Contesse, Alphee, Etudes sur I'alcoolisme et sur I'etiologie de la 

paralysie generale. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1862. 
Doubeveyer, N. P., L'ivrognerie, Seul moyen vraiment efficace d'y 

mettre un terme. 1862. 
Krans, L'alcoolisme et la phthisic. (L^ Union Medicale, seconde 

serie, tome xiv.) Paris, 1862. 
Launay, L'Alcoolisme son influence sur la production de la phthisic 

et des troubles menstruels. {U Union Medicale, seconde serie, 

tome xiv.) Paris, 1862. 
Lunel, Adolphe B., Traite de la Fabrication des Tins. Paris, 1862. 
Baudot, Marc A., De la Destruction de I'Alcool dans I'Organisme. 

{U Union Medicale.) 1863. 
Guelle, A., De I'utilite de medication alcoolique dans quelques etats 

morbides. Paris, 1863. 
Fournier, A., Alcoolisme. Le Nouveau Dictionnaire de medecine 

et de chirurgie pratique (tome i. pp. 617-689). Paris, 1864. 
Girardin, J. P. L., Considerations sur I'usage et Pabus de l'eau-de- 
vie, etc. 1864. 
Jaccoud, Sigismond, Nouveau Dictionnaire de Medecine et de 

Chirurgie Pratique, tome i. Paris, 1864. 

, Sur I'Alcool, pp. 603-677. 

" , Alcoolisme, pp. 617-689. (Fournier.) 

, Alcoolisme. (Pathologic Interne.) Paris, 1877. 

Lagarosse, These de la folic alcoolique. Paris, 1864. 

Perrin, L'influeuce de I'alcool sur le mouvement de la nutrition. 

{Gazette des hopitaux.) Paris, 1864. 
, Action physiologiques de I'alcooL (Dictionnaire encyclopedique 

des sciences medicales.) Paris, 1865. 



BIBLIOGEAPHY. 553 

Voisin, A., De I'etat mental dans I'alcoolisme aigiie et cbronique, 

etc. Paris, 1864. 
Behier, Lemploi therapeutique de ralcool. (Dictionnaire ency- 

clopedique des sciences medicales.) Paris, 1865. 
Bebourge, Le Buveur, son present et son avenir ; le present et I'ave- 

nir de sa famille, de sa descendance et de la societe. Paris, 1865. 
Jolly, Paul, Etudes hyo;ienique et medicales sur I'acool. (Bulletin 

de VAcadeinie de Medicine, tome xxxv.) Paris, 1865-1866. 
Lanceraux, E., Alcoolisme. (Dictionnaire encyclopedique des 

sciences medicales.) Paris, 1865. 
, Etude sur les alterations produites par I'abus des boissons 

alcooliques. {Gazette Medicate de Paris.) 1865. 
, De I'alcoolisme et de ses consequences au point de Tetat 

pbysique, intellectuel et moral des populations. Paris, 1878. 
Legras, Arthur B., Contributions a I'emploi therapeutique de 

I'alcool. Paris, 1865. 
Payen, Anselm, Precis theoretique et pratique des substances 

alimentaires. Paris, 1865. 
Raige, Jacques, Delorme, et Dechamlre, A., Dictionnaire Encyclo- 
pedique des Sciences Medicales. 

, Sur I'alcool, pp. 579-615. 

, Sur I'alcoolisme, pp. 615-719. (Lanuraux.) 

, Les Alcools, pp. 719-724 (Tourdes), tome ii. Paris, 1865. 

Wurtz, Adolphe, Dictionnaire de Cliimie (tome i, part i. L'alcool, 

pp. 104-160). Paris, 1865. 
Brillaud Laujardiere E., De I'lvresse consideree dans ses conse- 
quences med. legales, Paris, 1866. 
Gariel, Marius, Essai sur I'alcoolisme considere principalement au 

point de vue de I'hygiene publique. Montpellier, 1866. 
Juliano, Georges, Essai sur I'alcoolisme. (These pour doctorat.) 

Paris, 1866. 
Larousse, Dictionnaire Universelle du xix. Siecle (tome i., article, 

Alcool). Paris, 1866. 
Artigues, L'armee, son hygiene morale. Paris, 1867. 
Foville, Archives generale. Paris, 1867. 

, La folie des grandeurs. Paris, 1871. 

Glandil, F., De la cirrhose alcoolique. Paris, 1867. 

Bohert, Charles, De I'ignorance. (Conferences populaires a I'asile 

imperial de Vincennes.) Paris, 1867. 
Audhoui, Victor, Pathologie generale de I'empoisonnement par 

I'alcool. Paris, 1868. 
Bidard, B., De I'infiuence de I'alcool sur la temperature et le puis, 

dans la pneumonie. Paris, 1868. 
Faure-Eavier, P.M., De Taction therapeutique de I'alcool. Paris, 

1868. 
Motard, Adoljphe, Traite d'Hygiene generale. (Tome i. p. 836, 

Boissons.) Paris, 1868. 



554 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

Nicolle, Eugene, De I'Abus des Alcooliques. Rouen, 1868. 

Notta, Eecherches statistiques sur la progression croissants de la 

mortalite en Normandie. L'Union Medicate (serie 3, tome v. 

p. 801). Paris, 1868. 
Pascal, Charles, De Talcoolisme et de son influence sur le 

developpment et la marche des maladies. (These pour doctorat.) 

Montpellier, 1868. 
Fiichard, lAbM, Essai sur la Temperence. Paris, 1868. 
Baudrillart, H., Des Habitudes de I'intemperance. Paris, 1869. 
Bellencontre, Deux ennemies de la sante. Des Boissons alcooliques. 

De Tabus du tabac. (Conf. Hygiene.) Paris, 1869. 
Oodfrin, Alfred, De I'alcool, son action physiologique, etc. 1869, 
Eofer, Johann G. F., Historic de la Chimie. Paris, 1869. 
Jung, E., Des effects physiologiques et therapeutiques de I'alcool. 

Paris, 1869. 
Magnan, V., Gazette des Mjpitaux, pp. 79, 82, 85, 100, 108. Paris, 

1869. 

• , Academic des sciences. Avril, 1869. 

, Receuil de medecine veterinaire. May, 1871. 

, Annales med. psych., p. 302. Paris, 1874. 

• , I'Alcoolisme, des diverses formes du delire alcoolique et de 

leur traitement. Paris, 1874. 
Bergeret, Louis F. E., De I'Abus des boissons alcooliques. Paris, 

1870. 
Gassaignes, A., ^Etude sur Taction physiologique et les effects 

therapeutiques de Talcool. Paris, 1870. 
Peronne, Gharles, De Talcoolisme dans ses rapports avec le trauma- 

tisme. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1870. 
Beaufume, de TAbus des liqueurs alcooliques comme cause de 

degenerescence physique et morale des peuples et des moyens 

d'y remedier. Paris, 1871. 
Ghauffard, Discussion sur Talcoolisme. Paris, 1871. 
Despine, Prosper, Le Demon Alcool, ses effets desastreux sur le 

moral, sur Tintelligence, etc. 1871, 
Gosselin, Bulletins de V Academic de Medecine. Paris, 1871. 
Eardy, Gazette des hopitaux, Compte rendu de TAcademie de 

Medecine. Paris, 1871. 
Legrand du Saulle Eenri, Le Delire des persecutions. Paris, 1871. 
Verneuil, Bulletin de V Academic de Medecine. 1871. 
Bergeron, Eapport sur la repression de Talcoolisme a TAcademie de 

Medicine. Paris, 1872. 
Burill, Paul, De Tlvrognerie et des moyens de la combattre. (These 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1872. 
Marty, Germain, Contributions a Tetude de Talcoolisme. (These 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1872. 
Marvaud, A., Etude de physiologic therapeutique. L'alcool, son 

action physiologique, etc. Paris, 1872. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 555 

Marvaud, A., Les aliments d'epargne alcool et boissons aromatiques. 

Paris, 1874. 
De la Gravite des Lesions Traumatiqnes et des operations cbirurgi- 

cales chez les Alcooliques. Paris, 1872. 
Arnauld, Jtdes, De I'alcool considere comme source de force, etc. 

1873. 
Bertrand, Edmond, Essai sur la moralite des classes ouvrieres dans 

leur vie privee. (Journal de la societe de Sfatistique, tome xiv. 

p. 93.) Paris, 1873. 

, Essai sur I'intemperance. Paris, 1875. 

Cambon, J. B., Considerations sur I'emploi de I'alcool en thera- 

peutique medicale. Montpellier, 1873. 
Cranney et Boucault, Commentaires de la loi sur I'ivresse vote Janv. 

1873. 
Bagonet, H. Be, Alcoolisme au point de vue de I'alienation mentale. 

1873. 
, Traite des maladies mentales. (Boehm's Ziemssen's Hdb. xv. 

p. 51.) 
Gambus, Lucien, De 1' Alcoolisme chronique termine par le paralysie 

generale. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1873. 
Lolliet, De I'alcoolisme comme cause de la paralysie generale. 

{Oazette des hopitaux.) Paris, 1873. 
Lunier, L., De I'Origine et de la propagation des societes de 

temperance. Paris, 1873. 
, De la production et de la consommation des boissons alco- 
oliques en France et de leur influeDce sur la saute physique et 

intellectaelle des populations. Paris, 1877. 
Beta, Des Consequences funestes de I'ivrognerie, etc. 1873. 
Chagnaud, Anatole, Des causes de I'alcoolisme ; etude d'hygiene 

publique. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1874. 
Cuzenf, Gilbert, Des Boissons enivrantes chez les differentes peuples. 

1874. 
Faugeron, G., De I'emploi de I'alcool dans le traitement des Suites 

de couches. Paris, 1874. 
Gazin, A., De I'alcool dans les pneumonies adynamiques. Paris, 

1874. 
Goy, L., De la pneumonie chez les alcooliques. Montpellier, 1874. 
Lefort, Joseph, Etudes sur le moralization et le Men etre des classes 

ouvrieres. Paris, 1874. 

• , Intemperance et Misere. Paris, 1876. 

Bicard, Eugene, Dangers de Tabus des boissons alcooliques. Paris, 

1874. 
Etude semerologique des inflammations du foi developpees sous 

I'iiifluence de I'f'bus des boissons alcooliques. Clin. Med. de 

I'hotel de Dieu (pp. 35-67). Pouen, 1874. 
Falin, De Paction physiologique et therapeutique de I'alcool. Paris, 

1875. 



556 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

OrancJier, Sur la medication tonique par I'alcool. (Ttiese pour le 

concours.) Paris, 1875. 
Jouffroy, Medication par I'alcool. (These pour le concours.) Paris, 

1875. 
Lorrin, Marc, Aperfu general de I'Here'dite et de ses lois. (These ' 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1875. 
Marfaing, Ernest, L'Alcoolisme considere dans ses rapports avec 

I'alienatiqn mentale. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1875. 
Prevost, H., Etude clinique sur le delire alcoolique. Paris, 1875. 
Coutan, De riofiuence de I'accroisement du nombre des cabarets sur 

sante publique et la crimiualite. Douai, 1876. 
Dubois, De I'infiuence des liquides alcooliques sur Taction des sub- 
stances toxiques. Le Mans, 1876. 
Dujardin, Beaumetz, et AudegS, Kecherches experimentales sur les 

alcools par fermentation. (Presente a I'Academie de Medecine.) 

Paris, 1876. 
■ , Recherches experimentales sur puissance toxique des alcools. 

Paris, 1879. 
Gautier, A., Sur la colorisation frauduleuse des vins. {Annales 

d' Hygiene publique et de Medecine legale.) Paris, 1876. 

, La Sophistication des vins. Paris, 1877. 

Targuet, Documents pour servir a I'histoire de I'ivresse et de I'alco- 

olisme. Paris, 1876. 
Goppehroder, Sur I'analyse des vins. 1877. 
Husson, 0., Du vin ses proprie'tes, sa composition, sa preparation, 

ses maladies, etc. Paris, 1877. 
Ficque, Dr. L., Essai de geographic medicale. Contribution a 

I'etude de I'alcoolisme. {Annales d' Hygiene, tome 47, p. 369.) 

Paris, 1877. 
Eiant, Aime, De I'alcool et du tabac. Paris, 1877. 
Hitter, E., Des vins colores par la fnchsine. Paris, 1877. 
Baudrimont, Marie V. Ernest, Dictionnaire des alterations et 

falsifications des substances, alimentaires medicamenteuses et 

commerciales avec I'indication des moyens de les reconnaitre. 

Sur I'alcool, pp. 88-106. Du vin, pp. 1209-1289. Paris, 1878. 
Garaudeaux, De la phthisie chez les buveurs, et de ses rapports 

avec la cirrhose du foie. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1878. 
Homais, M., L'Alcoolisme. Paris, 1878. 
Rabuteau, A., Des Alcools et de L'Alcoolisme. Paris, 1878. 
Comple-rendu du Congres International pour I'Etude des Questions 

Relatives a I'Alcoolisme tenu a Paris, 1878. 
Belieres, L., Rapports cliniques et anatomo-pathologiques de alco- 

olisme avec le paralysie generale. Paris, 1879. 
Haller, A., Theprie generale des alcools. Paris, 1879. 
Metman, M, Etude sur les Legislations Europeenes relative au 

debits de Boissons Alcooliques. Paris, 1879. 
Congres InternatioDal pour I'Etude des Questions Relatives a 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 557 

I'Alcoolisme. (Tenu a Paris du 13 au 16 Aout, 1878.) 

Paris, 1879. 
L'lvrognerie ses effets sur I'individu, la famille^ et la Societe. Rouen, 

1879. 
Lassegue, C, Les . Troubles visuels de ralcoolisme. (Archives 

Generales de Medecine, tome cxliv. p. 342.) Paris, 1879. 
Chevalier, L., De la Pneumouie chez les alcooliques. (These pour 

doctorat.) Paris, 1880. 
Comptes Rendus du Congres International de Medecine Mentale 

tenu a Paris du 5 au 10 Aout, 1878. Paris, 1880. 
Gendron, E., Alcoolisme Hereditaire. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 

1880. 
Bumouly, M.^ Recherches cliniques et experimentales sur Taction 

hypothermique de I'alcool. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1880. 
Liston, Note sur une nouvelle forme d'alcoolisme latent professionel 

et sur le moyen de la combattre. (Annates d' Hygiene jpublique 

et de Medicine Legcde.) Paris, 1880. 
Millet, J., De I'lnfluence Etiologique de I'Alcoolisme sur la paralysie 

generale progressive. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1880. 
Blanc, Leon Emile, Traitement des Abces chauds par les injections 

d'alcool. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1881. 
Lacaille, A., De la Pseudo- Paralysie generale alcoolique. (These 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1881. 
Moreaux, Marche de la paralysie generale chez les alcooliques. 

(These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1881. 
Boux, J., Etude sur les Rapports de I'Alcoolisme et de la Phthisic 

Pulmonaire. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1881. 
Ardouin, Conferences sur L' Alcoolisme. Paris, 1882. 
Baron, A., Le Pauperisme. Paris, 1882. 
Billaud, J., De I'Alcool Par employe comma Topique Resolutif 

dans les Inflammations aigues. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 

1882. 
Lailler, A., Da Cidre. Paris, 1882. 
Sartre, B., Traitement des abces chauds par I'incision limite avec 

injections d'Alcool. (These pour doctorat.) Paris, 1882. 
Vogelin, M., Contribution a I'Etude du Purpura Alcoolique. (These 

pour doctorat.) Paris, 1882. 
Gal, H., Recherches sur le passage des liqueurs alcooliques a travers 

des corps poreux. Comptes rendus des seances de L' Academic 

des Sciences. Paris, Nov. 1882, Jan. 1883. 
Henry, L., Sur quelques derives phrenoliques. Comptes rendus des 

seances de L'Academie des Sciences, April. Paris, 1883. 
Jaillet, J., Modifications que subit I'alcool, introduit dans 

I'economie. Pads, 1883. 
Menschutkine, N., Sur les deplacements mutuelles des bases dans 

les sels neutres, les systemes restant homogenes. Comptes 

rendus des seances de L'Academie des Sciences. Paris, 1883. 



558 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



AUSTRIA. 

Duchek, A., Ueber das Verhalten des Alkohols im thierischen' 

Organismus. ( Vierteljahrsclirift fur dieprahtisclie Heilhunde.) 

Prague, 1833. 
Bosenthdl, Moses, Tractatus de abusu Alcoholicorum. Yindobonas, 

1839. 
Prochazka, J. G., De Morbis potuorum. Pragse, 1842. 
Engel, Joseph, Die Sauferdyskrasie. Zeitschrift d. K. Gesellschaft 

d. Aerze zu Wien,, 1845. 
, Anleitung zur Beurtheilung des Leicbenbefimdes. Wien., 

1846, ■ 
Feuchterslehen, Ernst von, Lebrbuch der arztlichen Seelenkiinde. 

Wien., 1845. 
BoTcitansky, Carl, Handbncbder patbologiscben Anatomie. Wien., 

1846. 
Artiwinn, Ferdinand, Die Ijebre von den Nabrungsmitteln, ibrer 

Yerralschung und Conservirung, etc. Prag, 1859. 
Schlossar, Speise und trank vergangener ZeiLen in Deutscbland. 

Wien., 1877. 
Bersch, Jospf, Die Entstebung des Weines. 
Binz, Carl, Alcobol, Alcobolismus. Wien., 1880. 
Ganghofner, Ueber d.Einfiuss, d.Alkohols auf den Menschen. 

Prague, 1880. 



BELGIUM. 



Canoviero, P. A., De Admirandis vini vertutibus. Antverpise, 

1627. 
Guislain, Joseph, Traite sur les pbrenopatbies. Bruxelles, 1835. 
Buret, Antoine Eugene, De la misere des classes laborieuses en 

Angleterre et en France. Bruxelles, 1843. 
Compte Rendu du Congres de bienlaisance de Bruxelles. 1856. 
Bouquie-Lefehvre, Des causes et des resultats de Tin temperance. 

(Received tbe gold medal, worih 300 fr., offered by Mr. 

Dutrone at tbe Frankfort Conf., but be gave tbe value of it to 

tbe poor of Frankfort.) BruxeU.-s, 1858. 
Frere-Orhari Hubert J. W., De I'Abus des Boissons Enivrantes. 

Eenseisnements deposes a la Cbarnbre des Representants. 

Bruxelles, 1868. 
Jansen, Auguste, De I'lnfluence dans notre climat de I'Usage et de 

I'Abus des Alcooliques sur la sante de Touvrier. (Couronne 

par la Societe de Medecine d'Anvers.) Anvers, 1872. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 559 

Jansen, Auguste, De Tusase et de I'abus des alcooliques dans 

rarmee. Bruxelles, 1876. 
, De Tabus des Alcooliques dans la classe aisee. (Analyse par 

M. Du Moulin, Bulletin \de la Societe Medecine de Gand^ 

xiv. 464-466.) 1878. 

, De I'usage et de Tabus des boissons et des liqueurs alcooliques. 

Manuel d'instruction populaire recommande par TAcademie 
Royale de Medecine et par le Ministre de la Guerre, ^^amur, 

1880. 
Haech, F., Memoire sur les cause des effets bienfaisants, et les 

causes des effets nuisibles des boissons alcooliques. Bruxelles, 

1872. 
Falin, De Taction physiologique et therapeutique de Talcool. 

Anvers, 1874. 
La Societe Callier pour la moralisation des Classes laborieuses par 

Tepargne. Grand, 1874. 
Becelaere, Danger de I'abus des boissons alcooliques, etc. Congres 

Internationale d'l:iygiene. Bruxelles, 1876. 
Desguin, V., De Tabus des Alcooliques, ses causes, ses re'sultats, ses 

remedes. Bruxelles, 1877. 
-Barella, Hipp., De Tabus des Spiritueux, etc. Bruxelles, 1878. 

, Les Alcools et TAlcooTsme. Bruxelles, 1880. 

Rapport a M. le Ministre de TInterieur sur la question de TAlcoolisme. 

{Bull, de VAcademie Royale de Medecine de Belfjique, tome 

xiii. p. 1083.) BruxeUes, 1879. 
Congres Internationale pour TEtude des Questions Relatives a 

TAlcoolisme. Bruxelles, 1880. 
Delannois, Les MalaHes des buveurs. Bruxelles, 1880. 
Bulletin de V Association Beige contre VAbus des boissons Alcooliques. 

BruxeUes, 1882 to 1884. 



HOLLAND. 

MalinJcrot, Dissertatio ebrietatis patbologia. Traj. ad. Rh. 1723. 
Heufel, Von, Dissertatio de Yindemia et torcularibus veterum 

Hebra3orum. Ultrajecti, 1755, 
Schurmann, De effecLibus liquorum spirituosorum, Harderovii, 

1791. 
Sinclair, J., Handbucb der Gesundbeit, etc. Amsterdam, 1808. 
Fuhri, A. D., De potuum Spirituosorum affectibus in corpus 

humanum. Lugduni Batavorum, 1849. 
Schroeder vand der Kalk, J. L. C, Voorlezing over den inloed van. 

sterken drank op het ligchaam. Utrecht, 1850. 
Huydecoper, De Tabolition des boissons fortes. 1867. 
Florent Van der Ven, Het misbruik van sterke dranken. Almanak 



560 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 

van de Nederlandscbe vereeniging tot afschaffing van sterken 
drank. Anvers, 1873. 
De Volksvriend, journal hebdomadaire publie par I'Association 
neerlandaise contre I'usacce des boissons fortes. 



ITALY. 



Baimundus, LuUius, De secretis Natures sen quinta essentia. (Said 

to have written some sixty treatises on chemical subjects.) 

Venetiis, 1486. 
JBeroaldus, PJiilippus, Declamatis Ebriosi, Scortatoris, Aleatoris de 

Vitiositate disceptantium. Bononiae, 1499. 
Arnaldus, de Villa Nova, De Vinis. Venetiis, 1506. 
Praefedus, Jacobus, Symposium de Vinis. Eomse, 1536. 

, De Diversorum vini generum natura liber. Venetiis, 1559. 

Cornaro, Lewis, De Vitse Sobrise Commodis. Padua, 1558. 
Cagnati, Marsilio, Variarum observationum libri quatuor. Eomae, 

1587. 
Bacci, Andrea, De natural! vinorum historia, de vinis Italias, et de 

conviviis antiquorum, libri septem. Koma3, 1596. 
Saldi, J. F., De natura aquae vit«. Genu^ (Genoa), 1620. 
Caldera, Gasper Be Heredia, Tribunal, medicum, magicum, et 

politicum. Lugduni Batavorum, 1658. 
Carlucci, L., Dissertazioni chymicofisiche sopra I'analise del vino. 

Napoli (Naples), 1756. 
Fontana, Felice, Eicherche fisiche sopra il veleno della Vipera. 

Lucca, 1767. 
Bosellini, N. F. I. B.,1 Monumenti dell' Egitto e della Nubia. 

Pisa. Part L, vols, i., iv., 1832-1841. Part IL, vols, i., iii., 

1832-1836. Part III., vol. i., 1844. 
Tagliahue, Antonio, II Suicide. Milano, 1871. 
Bonclii, J. et Salvioli G., Studio critico-sperimentale intorno ad 

alcune particolaritse del-l'azione fisiologica dell' alcool. Modena, 

1875. 
Gain, Vitaliano, Absintismo. Memoria. . . . Con Alcuni appunti 

del Professore F. Coletti e risposta dell' autore. Padova, 1877. 
Venuti, Filippo, Dissertazione de' coli vinarij degli antichi. 
Tei'zi, Ernesto, Delia ubbriachezza in Italia et dei mezzi per 

rimediarvi. Milan, 1878. 



BIBLIOGKAPHY. 561 



RUSSIA. 

Pallas, Peter Simon, Eeise durch verschiedene. Provinzen des 
Ruszischen Reichs, Bd. i. p. 315, etc., Coumiss. St. Peters- 
burg, 1771-1776. 

Salvatori, Comment, pathol. et therap. de ebriositate. (Comment. 
Soc. Phys.) Mosquensis, 1821. 

Upinski, C, De actionepotionum spirituosorum in corpus humanum. 
Cracovise, 1839. 

StraucJi, E., Demonstratione spiritns vini in corpus ingesti. Dorpat, 
1852. 

Masing, P., De mutationibus spiritus vini in corpus ingesti. 
Dorpat, 1854. 

Hermann, Ueber den Missbrauch geistiger, Getranke in Russlaude 
Vortrag im Yerein Deutscher Aertze in St. Petersburg, Nov. 
13, 1867. St. Petei'sburgher medicinische. Zeitschrift, xiii., 
B. s., 65. St. Petersburg, 1867. 

Zimmerherg, H., Untersuchungen iiber den Einfluss des Alkohols 
anf die Thatigkeit des Herzens. Inaugural dissertation. 
Dorpat, 1869. 

'Granfelt, A. A., Nykyajan Paittiusliike. (The Temperance Move- 
ment of Our Time.) Helsingfors, 1883. 



SWEDEN. 



Linne, Carl V., Anmiirkningar om Branvin. Stockholm, 1748. 
Hall, Stephen, Formaning till Branvins-supare. Stockholm, 1754. 
Wallerius, J. G., Dissertatio de prima vinorum origine causali. 

Holmi^ (Stockholm), 1760. 
Linnaeus, Carl V., Dissertatio academica inebriantia. Respond. 0. 

R. Alander Upsalise, 1762. 
Bergius, Petrus, Dissertatio in qua spiritus frumenti proponitur. 

Upsahse, 1764. 
Westerdahl, Fr., Branvinets ode i Sverge. 1765. 
Neikter, J. F., De Vini usu foeminis Rom^e interdict©. Upsalise, 

1789. 
Erikson, C, Om Branvinet och des missbruk. Norrkoping, 1831. 
, Om Branvinets inflytande pa meniskokroppen. Stockholm, 

1831. 

, Om Branvinets Nytta och Skada. Mariestad, 1838. 

Ekman, 0. Chr., Nagra Ord om Branvinets Bruk och Missbruk. 

Calmar, 1839. 
Huss, Magnus, Alcoholismus Chronicus. Stockholm, 1849. (Vol. ii. 

1851.) .. 
Smith, L. 0., Oppet bref till Sverige's Arbetare. Stockholm, 1883, 

2o 



562 THE FOUNDATION OF DEATH. 



SWITZERLAND. 

Savonarola, M., De Arte conficiendi aquam vitse simplicem et com- 
positam deque ejus vi admirabili ad conservandam sanitatem et' 
corporis humani segritudines curandas. Basiliae, 1597.' 

Zimmermann, Johann G. von, Der Erfahrung in der Arzneykunst. 
Ziirich, 1764. 

Pictor, Sermon medico practicse (vol. ii. Haller Bibliotheca). Bernae, 
1776. 

Lehmann, Ueber die Folgen des Missbrauchs der geistigen Getranke. 
Bern, 1837. 

Hitzig, Eduard, Ziele und Zwecke der Psycbiatrie. Ziirich, 1876. 

Stierlin, B,, Ueber Weinfalschung und Farbung. Bern, 1877. 

, Das Bier, seine Verfalschungen und die Mittel, solche nachzu- 

weisen. Bern, 1878. 

Sell, E., Ueber Bier und seine Yerlalschungen. Bern, 1878. 



MEXICO. 



Moreno, J., E Apuntes sobre el empleo therepeutico del Alcohol. 
Mexico, 1871. 



INDEX OF AUTHOEITIES. 



Adamson, Rev. Dr., 346, 393 
Albany, Duke of, 331, 417, 432 
Albucassis, 30 
Alden, Henry M., 13 
Allemand, Dr. L., 89, 93 
Alliance News, 154 note, 239 note, 

256, 341, 354 note, 355, 371, 

Appendix 647 
Amyofc, 174 
Andersen, 30 
Anstie, Dr., 107, 120, 359 
Aristotle, 31, 34 
Armstrong, Sir William, 372 
Arnot, Hon. David, 351 note 
Asiatic Journal, 27 note 
Athenaeus, 17 
Avicenna, 30 
Audige, Dr., 96 



Bacon, Lord, 174, 226 
Baer, Dr., 28, 33, 55, 67, 82, 101, 
123, 176, 280, 281, 321, 332, 333 
Baker, W. M., 60 note 
Balfour, Mr., 442 
— — , Right Hon., 356 note 
Balzac, Honore de, 226 
Barry, Rev. Edward, 174 
Bartley, Mr., 400 
Basset, 38 

Bauer, Professor J., 89 
Baxter, Dr. J., 316 



Bayly, Mary, 252, 380 

, Captain, 380 

, Mrs. George, 380 

Beaumont, Dr. Thomas, 204 

, Dr. W., 74, 93 

Becamp, 43 
Becquerel, Dr., 64 
Beddoes, Dr., 123, 183 
Beecher, Henry W., 230 
Benson, Archbisliop, 420 

, Bishop, 310 

Bergenroth, 308 
Bergeron, Dr., 54 
Bevan, Llewellyn D., 370 
Bevington, Rev. A. C, 452 
Billing, Dr. Archibald, 103, 204 
Binz, Professor, 96 
Blanqui, 408 
Bock, Dr., 157 note 
Boetius, Hector, 23 
Baker, Dr., 83 
Bolas, 42 

Bouchardat, Dr., 90 
Bourgeois, Dr., 172 
Bourne, Stephen, 235 
Boussingault, 41 
Bowly, Samuel, 320 
Bowman, Dr., 72, 201 
Boyle, R., 35 
Branthwaite, Dr. H., 225 
Bridgett, Rev. Father, 25 note 
Brinton, Dr., 53 

British Medical Journal, 186, 207 
Brockhaus' Conversationxicon, 
38 note 



564 



INDEX OF AUTHOEITIES. 



Brooke, Eev. Stopford A., 122, 323 
Browne, Dr. J. Crichton, 113 
Brunton, Dr. T. Lauder, 79, 92, 

103, 104 
Buffon, 230 

Ballein, Dr. William, 309 
Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 387 note 
Burggraeve, Dr. A., 207 
Burne, Peter, 425 
Burns, Eev. Dr. Dawson, 234, 235, 

240, 269 note, 311 

, Mrs. Dawson, 360 

B urton, Walter, 49, 52 
Buxton, E. N., 399 



Csesar, Julius, 23 
Caine, W. T., M.P., 253, 455 
Camden, William, 309 
Camp, Maxima du, 280 
Campbell, T., 295 
Cantile, Dr. James, 99 
Carlisle, Bishop of, 422 

, Lord, 387 

, Sir A., 70, 218 

Carpenter, Dr. W. B., 63, 84 note, 

318 
Cash, Thomas, 268 
Cayley, Dr. William, 205 
Cetewayo, 354 
Chamberlain, Eight Hon. Joseph, 

M.P., 278, 402 
Channing, Eev. W. E., 166, 298, 

395, 414, 428 
Chapin, Eev. Dr., 437 
Cheyne, Dr. George, 182, 328 note, 

387 

, Dr. John, 160, 183, 312 

Christian, The, 368 note 
Christison, Professor, 106, 129 
Church of England Temperance 

Chronicle, 375 
Clark, Sir Andrew, 57, 121 
Classical Journal, 17 note 
Clegg, Alderman, 452 
Clouston, Dr. T. S., 272 
Cobden, Eichard, 414 
Cole, Mr., 54 

Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice, 232 
Collins, Sir William, 238 



Colquhoun, Mr., 343 note 

Connaught, Duke of, 432 note 

Copland, Dr., 316 

Corbet, W. J., M.P., 272 

Cowen, Joseph, M.P., 414 

Crane, Eev. Dr., 291 

Crosby, Eev. Dr. Howard, 278, 326 



D 

Daily Chronicle, 381 

Daily News, 52, 275, 355, 369, 405 

Daily Telegraph, 51, 262, 296 note, 

346 
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 131, 174, 

183 
Davenport, W. Bromley, M.P., 132 
Davies, Dr. 95 
Davies, Dr. Pritchard, 270 
De Foe, Daniel, 310 
Delevan, E. C, 338 note, 425 
Deacon, J. F., 341 
Denman, James, 50 
Denman, Mr. Justice, 232 
Derby, Lord, 242 
De Saussure, 41 
Diouysius of Halicarnassus, 21 
Disney, John, 229 note 
Dixon, Hep worth, 442 
Dogiel, Professor, 72, 82 
Donnat, Leon, 393 
Dowse, Baron, 232 
Draco, 20 

Drysdale, Dr. C. E., 88, 131, 269 
Dudley, Col., 46 note 
Du Halde, 28 note 
Dujardin-Beaumetz, Dr., 96 
Dumarquay, Dr., 95 
Dumas, 37 
Dumeril, Dr., 95 
Dunlop, John, 185 
Duroy, Dr., 89, 93 



E 

Eccles, A. E., 441 

Echo, 42 note, 266, 339, 343 note, 

383 note 
Edinburgh Revieio, 50, 53 
Edmunds, Dr. James, 77 note, 78, 



INDEX OF AUTHOEITIES. 



565 



86, 109, 128 note, 202, 216, 222, 

225, 267 
Edwards, H. E., 418 noU 
Ellison, Canon, 341, 368, 419 
livening Standard, 277, 412 
Exeter, Bishop of, 393, 426 

F 

Fabius Pictor, 21 

Fabroni, Adam, 8 note 

Farrar, Canon, 254, 844 

Farre, Dr. J. K., 58 

Figg, Dr. E. G., 91, 92, 94, 107, 

121, 173, 175, 219, 283 
Finkelburg, Dr., 282 
Fiske, Professor John, 111, 120 
Fitzgerald, Mr. Justice, 231 
Flint, Dr. Austin, 63, 68, 85, 88 
Flourens, Professor P., 58 
Fliigge, Professor, 40 
Forbes, Sir John, 103 
Fonrnier, Alfred, 47 
Frere-Orban, H. J. W., 275, 393 
Friend, Dr. J., 30 
Friend, The, 352 note 
Fuller, 338 



Ganghofner, Dr. F., 269 

Garnett, Dr., 317 

Garrod, Dr. A. Baring, 53, 131 

Geber, 29 

Gendron, Dr. E., 176, 280 note 

George, Henry, 409 

Gilbert, T., 444 

Gilchrist, Dr., 271 

Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., 231, 

345, 400, 452 
Glole, The, 370 
Glynn, Bev. Carr, 456 
Gordon, Dr., 317 
Gould, Eev. Baring, 7, 9 
Grimsby News, 412 
Grindrod, Dr. Ralph Barnes, 23, 

218, 316, 321, 433 
Grove, Mr. Justice, 231 
Gull, Sir William, 226, 266, 318 
Guthrie, Rev. Dr. J., 32 note 
Gutzeit, 43 



H 



Haggenmacher, Otto, 15 

Hale, Sir Matthew, 232 

Hales, Dr., 83 note 

Hamburger, J., 10 

Hamilton, Lord Claud. 438 

Hammond, Dr. W. A., 79 

Hancock, Rev. Dr., 204 

Hare, Dr. Charles, 197, 374 

Hargreaves, Dr., 275 

Harnack, Dr., 199 note 

Harrington, Sir John, 310 

Hart, Ernest, 186 

Hawkins, Mr. Justice, 233 

Hawksley, Dr. Thomas, 375 

Headland, Dr., 103 

Heath, J. P., 350 note 

Heaton, Mr., 271, 456 note 

Hermann, Dr. L., 57 

Hermes Trismegistus, 31 

Herodotus, 17, 58 

Hewitt, Rev. Dr., 321 

Hibberd, Shirley, 303 

Higginbottom, Dr., 183, 195 

Hinton, Dr. James, 92 

Hoefer, 30 

Holinshed, R., 182 

Holland, Dr. J. G., 437, 444 

Howard, Bronson, 447 

Howie, Dr., 115 

Hoyle, William, 234-238, 246-252, 

269, 271 
Huddleston, Baron, 232 
Huf eland, Dr., 158 
Humboldt, F. H. A. von, 27 
Huss, Dr. Magnus, 29, 33, 123, 

141 



Jacooud, Professor Sigismund, 176 
Jackson, Dr. Robert, 204 
James, Dr., 183 
Jeffreys, Archdeacon, 426 

, Dr. Julius, 184 

Johnson, Dr. Edward, 32 

, Dr. James, 317 

Jones, Edward, 243 
Juvenal, 13 



566 



INDEX OF AUTHORITIES. 



Kerr, Dr. Norman, 130, 177, 182, 
184, 185, 265, 267, 372, 375 

Keshub Chunder Sen, 354 

King, Dr. T., 103 

, Vice-Admiral Sir W., 297 

note 

Kirk, Eev. John, 245 

Kirkegaard, Soren, 299 

Klein, Dr. L. A., 67 

Koch, Dr. Albin, 64 

Kolliker, 40 

Kopp, H., 32 

Kotzebue, 7 

Kraft-Ebing, Professor, 140, 144, 
149, 178 

Kuyper, Herr, 94 



Lactantius, 18 
Lamb, Charles, 159 
Lanceraux, Dr. E., 175, 281 
Lancet, 55, 76, 190, 266, 313, 361, 

371, 390 
Latour, Cagniard, 40 
Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent, 35 
Lawson, Sir Wilfrid, 241, 345 
Le Clerc, M., 30 
Lecoint, Dr., 95 
Lees, Dr. P. K., 8 note, 73, 322 

note, 344 
Leigh, Canon, 362 
Leo Africanns, 29 
Lewis, David, 238, 267, 344, 394, 

442 
Libavius, 33 note 
Licensed Victualler^ s Simple Guide, 

27 note, 53 
Liebig, Justus von, 40, 88, 97, 123 
Lightfoot, Dr., 7 
Livesey, Joseph, 331, 411 
Livy, 21 

Lockhart-Eobinson, Dr., 269 
Lorin, Dr. Marc, 172 
Louisville Medical News, 42 note, 

378 note 
Lullas, Raimundus, 30 



M 

Macrorie, Dr., 317 

Mann, Dr., 279 

Manning, Cardinal, 258, 340, 39^ 

Manu, 6 

Marty, Dr. Germain, 231 

Masou, Dr. Lewis D., 145-148, 149, 

178, 279 
Maudsley, Dr., 148, 176 
Maury, Alfred, 12 
M'Cabe, Cardinal, 168 note 
McCulloch, Dr., 53 
McGee, Walter, 48 
McKay, Mr., 353 note 
McMurtry, Dr. A. H. H., 187 
Medical Temperance JournaJ, 24,186 
Medical Times, 157, 207 
Merriman, Rev. Mr., 112 
Midrasch Rahhoth, 10 
Milton, John, 7 
Mohl, Von, 36 
Moister, Rev. W., 436 
Morel, Dr. B. A., 174, 392 
Morewood, Mr., 7, 8, 12, 19, 25 

note, 27 note, 357 
Morgenstern, Mrs. Lina, 384 
Morley, Mr. S., M.P., 449, 451 
Mossop, Dr., 112 
Mount Temple, Lord, 449 
Mulhall, Mr., 271 
Miiller, Professor, 3, 36 
Mundella, Right Hon. Mr., M.P., 

399 , 
Munroe, Dr. H. , 87 note, 192 
Muntz, 41 

Murchison, Dr., 129, 130 
Myers, Dr. A. T., 206 



N 



Nageli, 40 

Napier, Sir Charles, 340 

Nasse, Dr., 95 

National Standard, 339 

National Temperance Advocate, 342, 

397 
Newcastle Chronicle, 417 
New Yorh Herald, 278 
N'ew York Medical Record, 389 



INDEX OF AUTHORITIES. 



567 



Nicol, Dr., 112 
Nicolls, Dr. S., 208 
Noble, John, 445 

O 

Orfila, Dr., 54 

O'Shaughnessy, M., Q.C., 231 
Ossington, Yiscountess, 451 
Owen, Sir P. C, 349 note 



Paget, Sir James, 87 

Pall Mall Gazette, 152, 178 note, 

190, 278, 306 note, 347 note, 384, 

388, 394, 397, 442 
Parkes, Dr., 47, 114, 124, 186, 197 

note, 241, 379 note 
Parsons, Rev. B., 184 note, 185, 

265, 425, 433 
Pasteur, 40 

Paul, C. Kegan, 320, 325 
" Pedro Verdad," 48 
Peek, Francis, 407 
Peligot, 37 
Percy, Dr. Jolin, 94 
Perrin, Dr. 89, 93 
Pettenkofer, 45 
Phillips, Wendell, 326 
Plohn, Dr., 392 
Pitman, Judge, 344 
Plancj, Colin de, 10 
Playfair, Dr. Lyon, 78 
Pliny, 21 
Powell, Mr., 276 
Prideaux, 23 
Priestley, 35 
Prout, Dr., 95 
Puckler, Prince, 433 

R 

Rae, Robert, 189, 354, 429 
Reade, A. A., 122 

, Charles, 416 

Redding, Cyrus, 48"' 
Reid, Dr. J. C, 225 
Rhazes, 30 
Riant, Dr., 47 
Richardson, Dr. B. W., 132 



Richardson, J. G., 440 
Ridge, Dr. J. J., 115, 120 
Rig-Vedas, 3-5 
Ritchie, Dr. J. J., ] 95 
Robinson, W. B., R.N., 268 
Rochester, Bishop of, 337 note 
Rodier, Dr., 64 
Roebuck, J. A., 416 note 
Romanes, Professor, J. J., 303 
Rosch, Dr. C, 174, 218 
Roth, Professor von, 3 
Rothschild, Lady de, 451 
Rumford, Count, 383 
Russell, Lord John, 387 

, T. W., 438 

Rutherford, 35 



St. Matthew, 8 

Salisbury, Lord, 401 

Samuelson, Mr., 25 note 

Sanderson, Dr., 241 

Sandras, Dr., 90 

Sanger, 274 

Saturday Review, 358 

Saunders, Charles, 259 

Savory, W. S., 101 note 

Scheele, 35 

Schlegel, 269 

Scholtz, Dr., 397 

Schrick, Dr. M., 182 

Schulz, Dr. C. H., 81 

Schwann, 36, 40 

Scientific Avierican, 140 

Sebright, John, 302 

Seneca, 16, 22 

Sewall, Dr., 317 

Shaftesbury, Earl, 270, 387, 404 

Shaw, Mr., 49 

Shepherd, Dr. Edgar, 269 

Sherlock, Frederick, 309 

Sims, George R., 253, 254, 363-367 

Smith, Dr. Edward, 96, 222 

, Rev. James, 169, 324, 426 

, L. 0., 384, 385, 386, 405 note 

, Dr. S. C, 203 

Solon, 20 

Son of Temperance, 378 note 

Spectator, The, 359 



oQ8 



INDEX OF AUTHORITIES. 



Spencer, Herbert, 302 
Spicer, W. J., 446 
Spurgeon, Rev. C. H., 297 
Startin, James, 130 
Stawell, Sir W. F., 452 note 
Stephenson, George, 444 
Stewart, Rev. Moses, 425 
Strabo, 13 
Stratt, Joseph, 428 
Sturge, Joseph, 456 note 
Sturges, Rev. S., 450 note 



Tabari, 11 

Talmud, 7, 9 

Taylor, 37 

Temperance Record, 314 note, 362, 

273 note, 381, 414, 423, 446 
Temperance Review, 217 
Temple, Sir William, 130 
" Theoricns," 182 
Thompson, Sir Heniy, 229, 317 

, Dr. Symes, 201 

Thomson, Dr., 31 

■ , H. A., 275 

Thudichum, Dr., 48 

Times, The, 50, 190, 199, 231, 346 

Todd, Dr., 72, 201 

Toronto Globe, 445 

Trotter, Dr. Thomas, 106, 183, 217 

Trvon, Thomas, 69 note, 295, 309, 

386 
Tupper, Sir Charles, 373 



Unkey, Eev, A. J., 352 noie 



Victoria, Queen, 430 
Yilla-Novus, Arnoldus, 30, 31 
Yizetelly, Mr., 49, 51, 55 

W 

Wakley, Coroner, 259 
Wales, Prince of, 431 
Walter, Mr., M.P., 399 note 
Wells, Bishop of, 451 : 

, Sir Spencer, 373 

Westminster, Duke of, 451 

Wetherbee, 54 

Weymouth and Portland Guardian, 

413 
Whitaker, Dr., 7 

Wilberforce, Canon Basil, 423, 426 
Wilkins, Dr. E. T., 279 
Wilson, Dr. James, 390 
Wine Guide, 54 
WoUowicz, Dr., 124 
Wolseley, Lord, 339 
Wood, Major. General Sir Evelyn, 

340 
Wookey, A. J., 352 note 
Wiinsche, Dr. Augaste, 11 
Wiistenfeld, 30 



York, Lord Mayor of, 429 
Young, Dr. Edward, 275 



Zsohokke, 337 



INDEX. 



A 

Absinthe, 45 

Abstainers and drinkers, relative 
longevity of, 268 

Abstinence, importance of national 
conviction on, 307 

pledge, worth and effective- 
ness of, 326 

Acute alcoholism, 128 

Adepts, the, 31 

Adulterations, liquor, 46-56 ; aloes 
in beer, 55 ; bitter almond in, 
46; buckbean in beer, 55; 
cocculus indicus in beer, 55 ; 
cocculus indicus in, 47 ; col- 
chicum used in, 47 ; colocynth 
in, 47 ; Colonel Dudley on, 46 
note ; concoctions of alum in 
beer for frothings, 55; copper in, 

47 ; copperas in beer for froth- 
ings, 55 ; essentia bina in, 47 ; 
ferrous sulphate in, 47; gentian 
in beer, 55 ; molasses used in 
beer for frothings, 55; oil of clove 
in, 46 ; oil of vitriol to give age 
to beer, 56 ; phosphoric acid the 
hop aroma in beer, 55 ; picric 
acid in beer, 55 ; port wine, 48 ; 
quassia in beer, 55 ; Ehine wines, 

48 ; salt in beer, 55 ; sherry, 49 ; 
sherry. Times newspaper on, 50; 
stramonium in, 46 ; strichnia in, 
46; sugar of lead in, 46; sulphate 
of iron used to give a bitter 
taste, 56 ; sulphuric acid in, 46 ; 



sweetworfc used in beer for 
frothings, 55 ; tobacco in, 47 ; 
universality of, 46 ; water in 
beer, 55 ; wine, proposed treaty 
between England and Spain, 
Daily News on, 52 

Africa, drinking in, 353 note 

Albucassis claimed to have dis- 
covered spirit distillation, 30 

Alchemists' belief in alcohol, 
reasons for, 31 

Alcohol, a chief agent in shorten- 
ing life, 59 ; action of, on nerves, 
102 ; a food, 66, 67 ; Dr. Ham- 
mond on, as a food, 79 ; reasons 
for belief that, is a food, 67 ; 
Eimyl, discovery of, 37 ; a nar- 
cotic poison, 106 ; as a cause of 
crime, 152 ; as a cause of prosti- 
tution, 274 ; as a medicine, 181 ; 
as a medicine, British Medical 
Journal on, 186 ; as a medicine, 
Dr. Hare on decline in use of, 
197; as a medicine, effects of use 
of, on mothers and offspring, 217 ; 
as a medicine, former and present 
opinions of, 198 ; as an anti- 
septic and anti-pyretic, 202 ; as 
an anti-spasmodic, 202 ; as a 
narcotic, 201 ; as a stimulant, 
200 ; a subject for chemical 
investigation, 37 ; attitude of 
physicians on the subject of the 
use of, 65 ; believed to be a 
great agent for producing happi- 



570 



INDEX. 



ness, 289 ; body and mind 
poisoning, 306 ; BrigM's dis- 
ease and, 129; conditions qualify- 
ing length, extent, and character 
of alcoholic paralysis, 120 ; Prof. 
Fiske on incipient alcoholic 
paralysis, 111 ; demands made 
by, upon the water of tlie system, 
85 ; derivations of the word, 32 ; 
diseases caused by, 127-151 ; 
Dr. Farre's opinion on life being 
shortened by, 58 ; Dr. F. R. 
Lees on the effects of, on 
digestion, 73 ; Dr. Richardson's 
summary of diseases springing 
from, 132 ; during the campaign 
in 1812 in Russia, 96 ; effect on 
nervous system, 98 ; effect on 
temperature of the body, 95 ; 
effect on tbe will, 160; effects 
of, as a mental stimulant, 121 ; 
effects on blood, 76 ; effects on 
the eye, 112; effects on the 
physical organs and functions, 
57-126 ; effects on stomach, 73 ; 
epilepsy from, 138 ; ethyl, dis- 
covery of, 37 ; evils of, during 
lactation, 218-224 ; during 
pregnancy, 219 ; first action of, 
made direct on the brain, 101 ; 
from smoke, 42 note ; general 
conclusions as to the narcotizing 
effects of, 121 ; general summary 
of the physiological results of, 
125 ; heredity, or the curse on 
descendants by, 171-180 ; in 
bread, 42 ; influence of, on the 
blood, 81 ; inimical to life, 70 ; 
in living organisms, plants, and 
animals, 43 ; in the drawing- 
room, 358-367; in water, air, 
and earth, 41 ; meaning of 
alcoholic preservation of tissue, 
80; mental phenomena due to, 
141-151 ; methyl, discovery of, 
37 ; mischief caused by, to 
blood-vessels, 86 ; 
Moderation in use of, 312 ; a 

greater virtue than abstinence ? 

324 ; among the French, 322 ; 

definitions of, 313 ; effects 



upon temper and judgment, 
321 ; entirely optional in our 
day, 312; no fixed standard 
possible, 312 ; practical worth- 
lessness of the plea of, 314 ; 
preparatory stage of drunken- 
ness, 316 ; publicans on, 313 ; 
various opinions on, 316-321 ; 
Natural sources of, 39 ; nerve 
paralyzing effects of, 114; ner- 
vous diseases from, 138; no right 
to be called a stimulant, 119 ; 
opinion of " Theoricus " on, 181 ; 
opinions of the judges on, and 
crime, 231 ; opinions on destruc- 
tive effects of, on society, 230 ; 
parallel effects of, on the nervous 
and muscular tissues, 100 ; 
paralysis from, 138 ; paralyzing 
effect of, on nerves, 105 ; 
physical effects of, in small 
doses, 115-120; powerful agent 
in restricting man to the life of 
the senses, 290 ; power of, over 
mankind, 293 ; presence of, in 
brain, 91, 93, 94 ; presence of, 
in breath, 91, 92 ; present in 
skin - evaporations, 92, 93 ; 
principal therapeutic uses of, 
199 ; produces degeneration of 
blood, 82 ; prolific source of 
chronic indigestion, 73 ; reasons 
for alchemists' belief in, 31 ; 
reduces the capacity for work, 
123 ; retards digestion, 71 ; 
sensory disturbance from, 133 ; 
social results caused by, 226-282 ; 
specious reasonings concerning 
the use of, 305-330 ; spread of, 
33 ; summary effects of, on 
digestion, 75 ; tendency of, to 
decompose into elements, 44 ; 
theories as to what becomes of 
it after entering blood, 88, 89 ; 
theories regarding the effects of, 
on the nerves producing the 
drink- craving, 120; three medi- 
cal declarations concerning, 
184-186 ; origin of third medical 
declaration, 189 ; traceable in 
urine, 92, 93 ; tried by the tests 



INDEX. 



571 



of food, 68; twofold hurtful 
influence on nutrition, 71 ; two- 
fold narcotizing action of, on 
brain and nerves, 109 ; use of, 
during siege of Paris, 67; use 
of, in early times, 284 ; various 
names for, 32 ; women and, 358- 
367. See also Alcoholism and 
Drink 

Alcoholic criminal activity, true 
field of direct, 157 

criminality, examples of un- 
intentional, 156 

drinking, physiological and 

mental results of, general sum- 
mary, 157 

drinks, food elements in, 76 ; 

various, 45 

dyspepsia, 133 

epileptiform mania,Dr. Mason 

on, 149 

fermentation, lethal nature 

of, 41 ; real nature of, first dis- 
covered, 40 

hallucinations, crimes com- 
mitted under, Prof. Kraft-Ebing 
on, 149 

infanticide, 266 

• insanity, 269, 279 ; Dr. Mason 

on, 145, 178 ; in Prussia, 281 ; 
in Eussia, 282 

mania, chronic, 149 ; its 

symptoms, 150 

• ■ melancholia, chronic, 150 ; its 

painful delusions, 150 

phthisis, 135 

prescription, warning against, 

225 

• prescriptions and their pre- 
parations, 199 

treatment of typhoid fever, 

mortality from, 206 

• tremor, 140 

Alcoholism, Dr. Huss the originator 
of the term, 128 ; gradual 
weakening and fi^al destruction 
of character by, 163 ,• general 
moral effects of, 168 ; one of the 
greatest causes of the depopu- 
lation and degeneration of 
nations, 176 j origin and causes 



of, 283-304; transmitted to de- 
scendants under various forms, 
177 ; analogy of acute, with 
insanity, Prof. Kraft-Ebing on, 
144 ; divisions of acute, 145 ; 
Dr. Huss on acute, 141 

Alcohols, groups and varieties of, 
37, 38 ; sources of, found in 
drinks, 45 ; various uses for, 44 

Ale, child mortality from use of, 
during lactation, 225 

Al-Mokanna's death, 29 

Almond, bitter, in liquor adultera- 
tion, 46 

Aloes in beer, 55 

Alum, concoctions of, used in beer 
for frothings, 55 

American schools, temperance 
education in, 397 

Amru, barbarities of, 25 

Amusements, a check on drink and 
crime, 417 ; duty of the rich to 
provide innocent, for the poor, 
417 ; reforming power and need 
of innocent, 414 

Amyl-alcohol, discovery of, 37 

Ancients, distillation unknown to 
the (excepting possibly the 
Chinese), 2; drinking among 
the, 1-24 

Ancient wine traditions, 6-12 

Anglo-Saxon power conquered by 
its intemperance, 337 

Anne, Queen, free trade in liquors 
during reign of, 310 

Antiseptics, comparative worth- 
lessness of, 203 

Antwerp, water ordinance in, 387 

Arabia, spirit distillation in, 29 

Araca asa, a brandy distilled from 
koumiss, 45 

Army, Belgian, drinking in the, 
338 note 

, English, importance of so- 
briety in, 337 ; Lord Wolseley 
on drink in, 339 ; Major-Gen. Sir 
Evelyn Wood's experiences, 340 

Arrack, a brandy obtained from 
rice, 45 

Artisans', Labourers', and General 
Dwelling Company, 442 



572 



INDEX. 



Association, the force of, 294 
Assyria and drink, 15 
Athens and drink, 20 
Atmosphere always charged with 

ferments, 40 
Aastralian. schools, temperance 

education in, 397 



Bacteria, or micro-organisms, 39 
note 

Bacchus, Noah thought to be 
original, 11 ; worship, 11-15 ; 
similarity between Greek and 
Egyptian, worship, 12 

Banks, Lord Derby on savings, 
242 ; savings, school system in 
Sweden, 398; suggestions for 
establishment of sober working 
men's, 405 

Barley for malting purposes, re- 
fusal to sell, 456 

Barmaids a cause of intemperance, 
368 

Beaumont, J. J., the case of, 296 
note 

Bechuanas and drink, 352 note 

Bedfordshire, drunkenness and 
crime in, 153 

Beer — Act, 357 ; adulteration, 55 ; 
aloes in, 55 ; alum used for 
frothings, 55 ; buckbean in, 55 ; 
cocculus indicus in, 55 ; Dr. 
Drysdale on, and gout, 131 : 
drinkers, fat in, 78 ; Drs. Beau- 
mont and Brunton on fat in 
drinkers of, 79 ; drinking, 77 ; 
drinking during lactation, 224 ; 
gentian in, 55 ; molasses in, 55 ; 
oil of vitriol used to give age, 
56; phosphoric acid in, 55; picric 
acid in, 55 ; quassia in, 55 ; 
sweetwort used for frothing, 55 ; 
salt in, 55, 77 note; Scientific 
American on general diseases 
resulting from, 140 ; sulphate 
of iron used to give the bitter 
taste in, 56 ; sulphuric acids 
used to give age, 56 ; water 
in, 55 



Belgian army, drinking in the, 
338 note 

Belgium, drink question in, 275 

Berlin, steam kitchen in, 383 

Bessbrook estate, 438 

Birmingham, public-house's in, 278 

Blood, alcoholic degeneration of, 
82 ; constituent parts of, 62 ; 
constitution of, 64 ; Drs. 
Becquerel, Eodier, and Albin 
Koch on constitution of, 64 ; 
effects of alcohol on, 76 ; in- 
fluence of alcohol on the, 81 ; 
the nature and twofold mission 
of, 62 ; theories as to what 
becomes of alcohol after enter- 
ing, 88, 89 

Blood-vessels, disease of the, 135 ; 
mischief caused by alcohol, 86 

Blue Eibbon movement, 449; 
Eight Hon. W. E. Gladstone on, 
452 ; significance of, 451 

Botany originated by Aristotle, 34 

Brain, first action of alcohol made 
direct on, 101 ; presence of 
alcohol in, 91, 93, 94 ; quahty 
of, decides the quality of its 
communicating power, 113 : 
twofold narcotizing action of 
alcohol on, and nerves, 109 

Bread, alcohol in, 42 

Breath, presence of alcohol in, 91, 
92 

Bright's disease and alcohol, 129 

British Medical Journal on alcohol 
as a medicine, 186 

Buckbean in beer, 55 

Burglar must be wary and cool, 165 



Calculus, 137 

Cambyses and his cup-bearer, 17 

Canadian schools, temperance 

education in, 397 
Canterbury Convocations on drink, 

229 
Carbon, definition of, 38 
Carbonic acid gas, 41 note; in coal 

mines, 42 
Carthage and drink, 22 
Cataract, 137 



INDEX. 



573 



Catliolic Total Abstinence League, 
396 

Cell theory established by 
Schwann and Yon Mohl, 36 

Cetewayo and drink, 354 

Character, gradual weakening and 
final destruction of, by alcohol- 
ism, 163 

Chemical elements, demonstration 
of, by Boyle, 35 ; of human body, 
60 

Children and drink, 297, 368-372 ; 
legislation against drinking by, 
369; legislation for temperance 
education of, 393 

Chinese supposed original dis- 
coverers of distillation, 27 

Chronic alcoholic mania, 149 ; its 
symptoms, 150 

Chronic alcoholic melancholia, 150; 
its painful delusions, 150 

Chronic alcoholism, 128 

Church, responsibility of the, in 
regard to drink, 417 

Church of England Temperance 
Society, Bishop of Carlisle on 
its success, 422; origin and 
growth, 419 ; its purpose and 
mission, 421 ; versus grocers' 
licences, 362 

Church proprietorship in public- 
houses denounced, 422 

City of London Total Abstainers 
Union, 449 

Clergy, responsibility of, in regard 
to drink, 417 

Cocculus indicus in beer, 55 ; used 
in liquor adulteration, 47 ; a 
substitute for alcohol, 55 

Cochineal used in colouring wine, 
55 

Coffee-tavern movement, 378 ; 
Daily Chronicle on, 381 ; Duke 
of Albany on, 432 ; History of, 
379 

Colchicum used in liquor adultera- 
tion, 47 

Cold-bath treatment, summary of, 
207 ; in typhoid fever, 205 

Colocynth used in liquor adultera- 
tion, 47 



Commune, results of drink under, 
280 

Compensation, in which all in- 
terests are satisfied, 349 ; pub- 
licans' side of the question, 348 ; 
to publicans, 347. See also Local 
option. Legislation, and Prohi- 
bition 

Confederacy of the Southern States, 
downfall of, 338 note 

Cooking, best system of, 385 

Copper used in liquor adultei-ation, 
47 

Copperas used for frothing, 55 

Crime, alcohol as a cause of, 152 ; 
amusements a check on, 417 ; 
opinions of the judges on alcohol 
and, 231-234 

Crimes committed under alcoholic 
hallucinations, Prof. Kraf t-Ebing 
on, 149 

Criminality, alcoholic examples of 
unintentional, 156 

Customs, drinking, 301, 428 ; origin 
and age of, 428; Queen's oppo- 
sition to, 429 

Cyrus, visit of, to King Astyages 
of Media, 16 



D 

Dalrymple Home for the cure of 
habitual drunkards, 372 

Darlington and Stockton Eailway 
Company and temperance, 444 

Declarations, medical, concerning 
alcohol, 184-186 ; origin of third, 
189; opinion of press on, 190; 
wording of, 191 ; impression on 
public mind, 192 ; medical 
opinions on, 192 

Delirium Tremens, 143, 147; Dr. 
Maudsley's description of, 148; 
its symptoms and general cha- 
racteristics, 147 

Deluge, punishment for drunken, 
ness, 8 

Diabetes, 137 

Diet for nursing mothers, 222 

Digestion, Dr. F. R. Lees on the 
effects of alcohol on, 73 ; retarded 



574 



INDEX. 



by alcohol, 71 ; snmmary effects 
of alcohol on, 75 

Diocletiat], barbarities of, 25 

Dipsomania, or the craving for 
drink, 177, 178 

Disease, definition of the term, 
127 

Diseases caused by alcohol, 1 27-1 51 ; 
due to the use of alcohol. Prof. 
Christison on, 129 ; Dr. Kichard- 
son on, 132 

Distillation, Chinese supposed 
original discoverers of, 27 ,• defi- 
nitions of, 26 ; history of the 
discovery of, 25-33 ; unknown 
to the ancients (excepting pos- 
sibly the Chinese), 2 

, spirit, 26, 27 ; Albucassis 

said to have discovered, 30 ; 
discovery attributed to the far 
East, 27 ; in Arabia, 29 ; old 
German legend attributes in- 
vention to the devil, 27 note; 
Ehazes, the Moorish physician, 
30 

Drawing-room and drink, 358-367 

Drink, allegory of Mohammed, 23 
note; among the ancients, 1-24 
among the ancient Scots, 23 ; 
among the Vedic peoples, 3-6 : 
amusements a check on, 417 
a cause of insanit}^ and suicide, 
269; at the Adelphi, 415; black 
list of crimes due to, 227 ; 
Canterbury Convocations on, 
229 ; children taught to, 297 

customs, 301, 428 ; origin and 

age of, 428 ; Queen's opposition 
to, 429 

-■ — -, decrease of population in 
France caused by, 281 ; dis- 
tributing to crews, discontinu- 
ance of, 447 ; history in England, 
308; in Assyria, 15; in Athens, 
20; in Belgium, 275; in Carthage, 
22 ; in Egypt, 18 ; in Greece, 20 ; 
in Media, 16 ; in Normandy, 281 ; 
in Persia, 16, 17 ; in Eome, 20 ; 
in Sparta, 20 ; in Syracuse, 22 ; 
instance of power of, to anni- 
hilate the will, 160 



Moderation in, 312 ; a greater 
virtue than abstinence ? 324 ; 
among the French, 322 ; defi- 
nitions of, 313 ; effects upon 
temper and judgment, 321 ; 
entirely optional in our day, 
312; no fixed standard pos- 
sible, 312 ; practical worth- 
lessness of the plea of, 314; 
preparatory stage of drunken- 
ness, 316 ; publicans on, 313 ; 
various opinions on, 316-321 
Drink mortality, 265 

and poverty, 245, 400 ; chief 

cause of poverty, 399 ; main- 
spring of poverty, 240; Dr. 
Channing on poverty with or 
without, 166 ; relations between, 
and poverty, 239 ; report of 
special sanitary commissioner 
on poverty and, 260 ; responsi- 
bility of rich in the question of, 
and poverty, 407 ; responsibility 
of magistrates, etc., in regard to, 
417; results for England, 275; 
specious arguments on account 
of climate, 314 ; statistics, 234 ; 
the deadly enemy of human 
happiness, 167 ; trafiic and its 
evils, 236. /See also Alcohol 
Drinkers and abstainers, relative 

longevity of, 268 
Drinking, and positions of trnst, 
445; fountains in London, 387 
note ; habits, social, 436 ; mode- 
rate, 312 
Drunkard, moral insolvency of, 

161 
Drunkards, cure of habitual, 375 
Drunkards' children, condition of, 

256 
Drunkenness, analogy of, with in- 
sanity, 144; habitual, universally 
condemned, 312 ; qualified by 
the kind of intoxicant, 156 ; 
examples of, 157 
Durham, drunkenness and crime 

in, 153 
Dyspepsia, alcoholic, 133 



INDEX. 



0/0 



E 

Edgar, King, attempts to check 
intemperance, 338 

Education, Dr. Channing's defini- 
tion of, 395 ; drink in its bearing 
CD, 399; of the wealthy, 399 
note ; poverty the worst enemy 
of popular, 399 ; temperance, in 
American, Australian, Canadian, 
and German schools, 397 ; public 
schools, 396 ; public money de- 
voted to, and war, 394 

Egypt, drink and temperance 
efforts in, 18 

Egyptians earliest brewers, 18 

Egyptian worship of Bacchus, 
similarity between it and Greek, 
12 

Elderberries used in colouring 
wines, 55 

Eleusinian mysteries, 13 ; abolished 
by the Emperor Herodosius the 
Great, 15 

England, commencement of wine- 
drinking in, 309 ; drink history 
of, 308 ; drink results for, 275 ; 
hard drinking unknown in, until 
seventeenth century, 310 ; im- 
portance of sobriety in army 
and navy, 337 ; obligations of 
the Government in internal 
reforms, 335 

English army, importance of 
sobriety in, 337 ; Lord Wolseley 
on drink in, 339 ; Major- Gen. Sir 
Evelyn Wood's experiences, 340 

English nation, virility of, and 
drink, 308 

Epileptiform mania, alcoholic, Dr , 
Mason on, 149 

Epilepsy from alcohol, 138 

Erysipelas largely due to alcohol, 
130 

Esquimaux and alcohol, 96 

Essentia bina used in liquor 
adulteration, 47 

Essex, drunkenness and crime in, 
153 

Ethyl-alcohol, discovery of, 37 

Eye, narcotic effects on, 112 

Eyes, alcohol and the, 137 



F 

Fermentation, discovery of, at- 
tributed to Jemsheed, 16 note ; 
meaning and processes of, 39 

Ferments, important role played 
by, 65 ; nature, action, and 
influence of, on life, 39 

Ferrous sulphate used in liquor 
adulteration, 47 

Fever, cold-bath treatment in 
typhoid, 205 ; mortality from 
typhoid, under alcoholic treat- 
ment, 206 ; Dr. Murchison on, 
129 ; water-treatment in, 204 

Food, alcohol as a, QQ, 67 ; defini- 
tion of, 61 ; Dr. Hammond on 
alcohol as a, 79 ; elements in 
alcoholic drinks, 76 ; in alcoholic 
drink not in the alcohol, but in 
the residuals, 78; parafl&n as a 
respiratory, 89 ; reasons for 
belief that alcohol is a, 67 ; sugar 
an important element of, 68 

Foods, alcohol tried by the tests 
of, 68 ; broadly divided into 
three classes, 61 ; chemical 
division of, 62 ; division of the 
regular, 62 ; the process of 
nutrition, 62 

Forbidden fruit, vine the, 7 

Forger must be sober, 165 

France, decrease in population of, 
caused hj drink, 281 

Freemasonry and temperance, 431 

French, moderate drinking with 
the, 322 

■ army, deterioration of, caused 

by drink, 280 

Eevolution, 408 



G 



Geber on distillation, 29 

Gentian in beer, 55 

German schools, temperance edu- 

cation in, 397 
Germany, a sixteenth-century 

temperance society in, 312 ; 

early moderation societies in, 

332 ; reasons for their f ailui'e, 333 



76 



INDEX. 



Ghazal, meaning of, 17 note 

Gin-diinker's liv^er, 130 

Gout, Drs. Darwin, Drysdale, and 
Garrod on, 131 ; Sir William 
Temple on, 130; wines to be 
avoided in, 53 

Grand Trunk Railway and temper- 
ance, 446 

Grape, purple, origin of, 11 

Graspers who succeed and who 
fail, 290 

Greece and drink, 20 

Greek worship of Bacchus, simi- 
larity between it and Egyptian, 
12 

Greenlanders and alcohol, 96 

Griquas and drink, 351 note 

Grocers' Licence Acts, 357 ; G. E. 
Sims on social effects of, 363 ; 
protests in press against, 360; 
reasons for repeal of, 367 

H 

Habit, force of, 295 ; because of 
natural laws, 295 ; becomes 
instinct, 300-303; difficult to 
break, 300; of evil, 299; of 
hereditary, 298 

Habitual drunkenness universally 
condemned, 312 

Hallucinations, crimes committed 
under alcoholic, Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing on, 149 

Hampshire, prohibition in, 441 

Happiness, alcohol believed to be 
a great agent for producing, 
289 ; foundation of human, 167 ; 
missed by man's self-deception, 
291 ; searching after, 285; what 
it is and how found, 293 

Hastings, battle of, lost through 
drink, 337 

Health, definition of the term, 
127 ; drinking, 434 ; example of 
recuperative powers of body, 
392; specious arguments on, 
and strength, 328 

Heart, disease of the, 134 

Heredity, or the curse entailed on 
descendants by alcohol, 171-180; 



diseases of alcoholic, Prof. Kraf t- 
Ebing on, 178; Drs. Bourgeois 
and Figg on, 172, 173; Dr. 
Lorin on general laws of, 172 ; 
Lacteal, 178 note; scope of 
hereditary effects, 173 ; the laws 
of, a protection to the race, 171 ; 
various authorities on, 174 
Home of the drunken wife and 

mother, 161 
Homes for drunkards, 372-376 
Horns, symbol of Bacchus, 13 
Human body, chemical elements 
of, 60 ; quantity of water in, 63 
Huss, Dr., the originator of the 

term alcoholism, 128 
Hydrogen, definition of, 38 



India, increase of drinking in, 353 
Indigestion, chronic, alcohol a 

prolific source of, 73 
Indra-worship, 4-5 
Infanticide, alcoholic, 266 
Infants, water for, 389 
Insanity, analogy of drunkenness 

with, 144 ; on the increase, 272 ; 

tables showing the assigned 

causes of (see Appendix) 
, alcoholic, 269, 279; Dr. Mason 

on, 145, 178 ; in Prussia, 281 ; in 

Russia, 282 
Insomnia, 138 
Instinct, 302 
Intemperance, greater plague than 

war, pestilence, or famine, 231 ; 

juvenile, in Manchester and 

Liverpool, 368 
Intention, difference between will 

and, 160 
Intoxicant, qualifies kind of 

drunkenness, 156 ; examples of, 

157 
Intoxication, acts of, 291 



Jews and drink, 23 



INDEX. 



577 



K 



Kepler extract of malt, 380 note 
Kidneys, alcohol and the, 137 
Kirsch, a brandy from the black- 
berry, 45 
Kissing women on the mouth, 

supposed origin of, 22 
Knowledge, first graftings towards, 

by means of the senses, 288 
Koumiss — fermented milk, 45 



Lactation, beer. drinking during, 
224 ; child mortality from beer- 
drinking during, 225 ; evils of 
alcohol during, 218-224 

Lamb's, Charles, pathetic warning, 
159 

Land nationalization, a cure for 

- poverty, 409 ; examples of 

reasonalDle effects, 412 ; results 

of, without temperance reform, 

411 

Laplanders and alcohol, 96 

Legislation, 367 ; dangers attend- 
ing, 337 ; dangers attending 
political agitation, 341 ; for 
poverty, 407 ; futility of, as a 
cure for poverty, 408 ; Habitual 
Drunkard's Act, 375 ; inter- 
national, on drink question re- 
quired, 376 ; liquor, 357 ; need 
of a national permanent drink 
commission, 377 ; obligations of 
British Government in internal 
reforms, 335 ; parliament and 
the drink question, 228 ; parlia- 
mentary report on drink in 1834, 
241; Queen's speech (1883), 
344 ; suggestions for alleviation 
of poverty, 401 ; temperance 
education for children, 393 
Licences, restriction of the power 

of renewing, 367 
Licensing, summary of history of, 

357 
Life, average limit of, 58; alcohol 
inimical to, 70; alcohol a chief 
agent in shortening, 59; Dr. 



Herman's idea of limit of human, 
57 ; ignorance chief cause of 
brevity of, 59 ; nature, action, 
and influence of ferments on, 
39 ; water of paramount im- 
portance to, 63 ; wisdom inherent 
in organic, 60 

Liquor adulterations. iSee Adultera- 
tions, liquor 

Liquor-dealers, mortality among, 
266 

Liver, alcohol and the, 137 ; cir- 
rhosis or shrinkage of, 130 ; Dr. 
Murchison on functional di- 
seases of, 130 

Liverpool, juvenile intemperance 
in, 368 ; social condition of poor 
in, 260 

Local Option, 345; Sir Wilfrid 
Lawson's scheme, 345 ; Sir 
William Harcourt on, 346-347 

Logwood used in colouring wine, 55 

London, agitation for pure water 
supply in, 387 ; drinking -foun- 
tains in, 387 note ; Bitter Cry 
of Outcast, 264 ; homes of the 
poor, 252-256 ; Horrible, 254 ; 
" How the Poor Live," 253 ; 
*' Why should London wait ? " 
262 

Temperance Hospital, history 

and progress of, 208 ; origin, 
foundation, and work of, 209 ; 
summary of all cases of typhoid 
fever treated in, 212 ; methods 
of treatment in, 216 

Longevity, relative, of drinkers 
and abstainers, 268 

Lord's Supper, intoxicating wine 
in the, 301 ; use of wine in, 
423-428 

Lullus, Raimundus, and spirit dis- 
tillation, 30 
Lungs, disease of the, 135 
Lupulit, a narcotic drink, 56 



M 



Macrobians in the time of Cambyses, 

58 
Madagascar, liquor prohibition of 
2 P 



578 



INDEX. 



Queen of, 356 ; liquor treaty 

with, 355 
Magistrates, responsibility of, in 

regard to drink, 417 
Mallow-bloom used in colouring 

wine, 55 
Malt not so nutritious as grain, 78 

extract a promoter of easy 

digestion, 379 note ; Kepler, 380 
note 

liquors, Drs. Beaumont and 

Brunton on the fat of drinkers 
of, 79 ; specially considered, 77 

Malting, 45 

" Man no longer dies, he kills 

himself," 173 
Manchester, drunkards' children 

in, 256 ; juvenile intemperance 

in, 368 
Mania-a-potu, 143, 146 
Mankind, divided into two great 

factions, 290 ; power of alcohol 

over, 293 
Martha Washington Home, 374 

note 
Media and drink, 16 
Medical declarations concerning 

alcohol, 184-186 ; origin of 

third, 189 ; opinion of press on, 

190 
Medical profession, Dr. McMur- 

try's appeal to, 187 
Medicine, alcohol as, 181-225 ; 

British Medical Journal on alco- 
hol as, 186 ; Dr. Hare on decline 

in use of alcohol as, 197 ; former 

and present opinions of alcohol 

as, 198 
Melancholia, chronic alcoholic, 150; 

its painful delusions, 150 
Mental phenomena due to alcohol, 

141-151 
results of alcohol, general 

summary of, 157 
Methyl-alcohol, discovery of, 37 
Middle Ages, drink in the, 25 
Midland Railway and temperance, 

445 
Milk instead of alcohol in hospitals, 

198 
,hot,a healthful drink, 378 note 



Moderation in drink, 312 ; no 
fixed standard possible, 312 ; 
entirely optional in our dav, 
312 ; definitions of, 313.; 
publicans on, 313 ; , practical 
worthlessness of the plea of, 
314; preparatory stage of 
drunkenness, 316 ; various 
opinions on, 316-321 ; efPects 
upon temper and judgment, 321 ; 
among the French, 322 ; a greater 
virtue than abstinence ? 324 

societies, early, 332 

Mohammedans and drink, 23 
Mohammed's drink allegory, 23 

note 
Molasses nsed in beer for froth- 

ings, 55 
Moral insolvency of drunkard, 161 
Mortality among liquor-dealers, 

366 ; from drink, 265 
Murderer and drink, 165 
Music, humanizing power of, 415 



N 



Narcotic, alcohol as a, 201 

Narcotics, 102 ; definition and 
division of, 105 ; the most im- 
portant, 104 ; various conflicting- 
definitions of, 103 

Narcotizing effects of alcohol, 
general conclusions as to, 121 

National Temperance Federation, 
jjlan and organization of, 452 ; 

National Temperance League, 
labours of, 396 

Navy, English, importance of 
sobriety in, 337 

Nerves, action of alcohol on, 102 ; 
paralyzing eSect of alcohol on, 
105, 114; twofold narcotizing 
action of alcohol on brain and, 
109 

Nervous diseases from alcohol, 138 

Nervous system. Dr. Cantile on 
character and functions of, 99 ; 
effects of alcohol on, 98 ; physio- 
logy of, 98 

New York Christian Home for 
Intemperate Men, 374 note 



INDEX. 



579 



New York city, rum shops in, 278 
Nitrogen and oxygen, discovery 

of, 35 
Noah, said to be Saturn, 12 ; 

thought to be original Bacchus, 

11 

and Satan planting the vine, 9 

Normandy, drink in, 281 
Northumberland, drunkenness and 

crime in, 153 
Nutrition, the process of, 62 

O 

Oatmeal drink, 379 note 

Oil of clove in liquor adulteration, 

46 
of turpentine first obtained 

by Amoldus Villa-Novus, 31 

of vitriol to give age to beer, 

•56 
Organic diseases from alcohol, 134 
Oxidation, discovery of the basis 

of, by Lavoisier, 35 
Oxygen, definition of, 38 
and nitrogen, discovery of, 35 



Paraffin as a respiratory food, 89 
Paralysis, conditions qualifying 

length, extent, and character of 

alcoholic, 120 ; from alcohol, 

138 ; incipient alcoholic, 111 
Parentage, responsibility of, 171 
Paris, siege of, drink during, 280 
Parliament and the drink question, 

228 
Parliamentary report in 1834 on 

temperance, 241 
Pathological results of alcohol, 

127-151 
Patriotism, groundwork of all, 295 
Pauperism, drink the mainspring 

of, 240 
Persia and drink, 16, 17 
Phosphoric acid the hop aroma in 

beer, 55 
Phthisis, alcoholic, 135 
Physicians, responsibility of, in 

regard to drink, 417 



Physiology, in temperance re- 
form, 334 ; organic scientific, 
established, 36 ; originated by 
Aristotle, 34 
Physiological effects of alcohol in 
small doses, 115-120; results of 
alcohol, 57-126; general sum- 
mary of, 125 ; physiological and 
mental results of alcohol, general 
summary of, 157 
Picric acid in beer, 55 
Pig, fable of drunken man and 

sober, 158 
Poison, definition of, 64 ; division 

into two groups, 64 ; 
Poisons used in liquor adultera- 
tion, 47 
Political agitation, dangers attend- 
ing, 337, 341 
Port wine adulterations, 48 
Poverty, caused by drink, 399, 
400 ; ' drink the mainspring of, 
240 ; futility of mere legislation 
on, 408 ; land nationalization a 
cure for, 409 ; Mr. Gladstone 
on, 400 ; propagation of, 372 ; 
State aid, 404 ; suggestions for 
alleviation of, 401 ; with and 
without drink, Dr. Channing- 
on, 166 ; worst enemy of popular 
education, 399 
— — ' and drink, 245-400; report 
of special sanitary commissioner, 
260 ; responsibility of the rich 
in the question of, 407 ; relations 
between, 239 
Pregnancy, evils of alcohol during, 

219 
Progress, human foundation of, 

167 
Prohibition — Artisans', Labourers', 
and General Dwelling Company, 
442 ; Bessbrook estate, 438 ; 
dangers attending political 
agitation for, 341 ; estate in 
Tyrone, 438 ; in Hampshire, 
441 ; initiary measures for, 
345; in St. Johnsbm-y, Ver- 
mont, 443 ; in Saltaire, 441 ; in 
the town of Pullman, U.S.A., 
443 ; Queen of Madagascar's 



580 



INDEX. 



proclamation, 356; real estate 
companies, 442 ; village of White 
Coppice, 441 ; when practicable 
and beneficent, 343. See also 
Local Option and Legislation 

Prostitution and alcohol, 274 

Prussia, alcoholic insanity in, 281 

Pseudo-stimulant, meaning of term, 
105 

Publicans, compensation to, 347; 
mortality among, 266 

Public-house, proposalf or a mission 
to start, 306 note 

Public-houses, Church proprietor- 
ship denounced, 422 ; low win- 
dows compulsory for, 367 ; pay- 
ment of wages at, 435 

Public schools, temperance educa- 
tion in, 396 

Pullman, town of, prohibition in, 
443 

Q 

Quarterly Medical Temperance 
Journal established, 186 

Quassia in beer, 55 

Quicklime sometimes used in 
rectifying spirits, 47 

E 

Eailway companies and temper- 
ance, 444 
Keal estate companies, prohibition 

in, 442 
Rectification, 27 
Eefreshment Houses and Wine 

Licences Act, 357 
Eeligion, man's self-deception in, 

292 
Ehazes, the Moorish physician, 

and spirit distillation, 30 
Ehine wines, adulterations of, 48 
Eich, duty of, to provide innocent 

amusement for the poor, 417; 

responsibility of, for the drink 

evil, 437 ; in question of poverty 

and drink, 407 
Eig-Yedas, the, 3 
Eobinson, Captain, the case of, 

296 note 
Eome, results of intemperance in 



described by Seneca, 22; temper- 
ance efforts in, 21 

Rome and drink, 20 

Rum, recipe by Dr. Riant for 
making, 47 ; recipe for making 
old Jamaica, 47 ; spirit from 
sugar refuse, 45 

Russia, alcohol during the cam. 
paign of 1812 in, 96 ; alcoholic 
insanity in, 282 

S 
St. Joknsbury, Vermont, prohibi- 
tion in, 443 
Salt in beer, 55, 77 note 
Saltaire, prohibition in, 441 
San Francisco, Inebriates' home 

at, 373 note 
Santschu, a drink in China and 

Japan, 28 
Sarcostemma acidum, 3 
Sardanapalus, motto of, 15 
Satan and Noah planting the 

vine, 9 
Satyavarman, 12 
Science, man's self-deception in, 

292 
Scotland, temperance reform in, 

356 note 
Scots, ancient, drink among the, 

23 
Seneca, results of intemperance in 

Rome described by, 22 
Sensory disturbance from alcohol, 

133 
Serpent worship, 12, 13 
Sherry, adulteration of, 49 
Siam, liquor treaty with, 355 
Silver King, 415 

Skin, alcohol present in evapora- 
tions of, 92, 93; Mr. Startiu 
on diseases of, 130; vascular 
changes in the, 133 
Sleeplessness and alcohol, 138 
Smoke, alcohol from, 42 note 
Sobriety, Mr. Joseph Cowen on 
importance of, 414 ; relations 
between it and crime, 156 
Social drinking habits, 436 
Society, general effects of alcohol 
on, 226-282 j opinions on de- 



INDEX. 



581 



structive effects of alcohol on, 
230 

Soma, 3 ; real character of, 4 ; 
unique properties of, 5, 6 

Sparta and drink, 20 

Spirit, definition of, 26 

Stage, power and province of the, 
415 

Statistics, drink, 234 ; general 
value of, 226 

Steam kitchen in Berlin, 383 ; in 
Stockholm, 384 

Stimulant, alcohol as a, 200 ; 
alcohol no right to be called a, 
119; effects of alcohol as a 
mental, 121 

Stimulants, 102 ; definition of, 
105 ; divided into invigorators 
and prostrators, 105 ; the most 
important, 104 ; various con- 
flicting definitions of, 103 

Stockholm, steam kitchen in, 384, 
385 

Stomach, Dr. Beaumont's ex- 
periments on the Canadian 
hunter's, 74 ; effects of alcohol 
on, 73 

Stout, child mortality from use of. 
during lactation, 225 

Stramonium in liquor adulteration, 
46 

Strichnia in liquor adulteration, 46 

Sueves and drink, 23 

Suicide, drink as a cause of, 269 

Sugar, alcohol derived from, 39 ; 
important element of food, 68 

of lead in liquor adulteration, 

46 

Sulphate of iron used in beer to 
give a bitter taste, 56 

Sulphuric acid, in liquor adultera- 
tion, 46 ; used to give age to 
beer, 56 

Sura, 4 ; a national curse, 6 

drinkers, penalties imposed 

upon, 6 

Sweden, school savings-bank sys- 
tem in, 398 

Sweet wort used in beer for froth- 
ings, 55 

Syracuse and drink, 22 



T 

Tafia, a brandy from molasses, 45 

Temperance, foundation of na- 
tional regeneration, 411 ; Par- 
liamentary report in 1834 on, 
241 ; relative healthfulness of, 
and drink, 268 

Temperance movement, abroad, 
192 note 

and the aristocracy, 449 ; 

characteristics of modern, 333 ; 
commencement of modern, 334 ; 
medical history of, 182 ; the 
three medical declarations con- 
cerning alcohol, 184-186 

Temperance reform. Archbishop 
Benson on, 420; foundation in 
individual character and worth, 
455 ; in Scotland, 356 note ; in- 
terest of Duke of Albany in, 432 ; 
interest of Prince of Wales in, 
431 ; on railroads, 444 ; physi- 
ology in, 334 ; Queen's sympathy 
with, 429 ; vested in love, labour, 
and humility, 456; why past 
efforts failed, 332 

Temperature of body, effect of 
alcohol on, 95 

Therapeutic uses of alcohol, prin- 
cipal, 199 

Tissues, meaning of alcoholic pre. 
servation of, 80 ; parallel effects 
of alcohol on the nervous and 
muscular, 100 

Toasts and health-drinking, 434 

Tobacco used in liquoradalteration, 
47 

plant, the forbidden fruit, 7 

note 

Total abstinence a qualification for 
Church membership, 425 

Trade customs, 435 

uses of alcohol, 44 

Traditions, ancient wine, 6-12 

Tremor, alcoholic. Prof. Kraft- 
Ebing on, 140 

Tyrone, prohibition estate in, 438 

U 

United States, annual drink bill of, 
275 ; liquor consumption of, 277; 



582 



INDEX. 



liquor industry of, 276; liquor 
revenue of, 277; statistics of 
public-houses in, 278 
Urine, alcohol traceable in, 92, 93 



Vedic people, drinking among the, 
3-6 

Vice, propagation of, 372 

Villa-Novns, Arnoldus, and spirit 
distillation, 31 

Vine, legends of, 8 note; plant- 
ing edict, Emperor Domitian's 
famous, 22 ; the forbidden fruit, 
7; planted by Noah, a sprig 
from Paradise, 8 

W 

War and education, public money 
devoted to, 394 

Washington Home of Chicago, 373 
note 

Water, agitation for pure, in 
London, 387; bibliography of, by 
Dr. Plohn, 392 ; Drs. Becquerel, 
Eodier, and Albin Koch, on pro- 
portion of, in blood, 64 ; drinking, 
390 ; drinking in 1498, 308 ; for 
infants, 389; functions of, 63; 
pure, greatest essential for life 
and health, 386 ; in beer, 55 ; of 
paramount importance to life, 
63 ; ordinance in Antwerp, 387 ; 
quantity of, in human body, 63 ; 
scavenger of body, 84; thera- 
peutic properties of, 390 ; treat- 
ment in fevers, 204 

Wealth, Dr. Channing's true use 
of, 395 

Wealthy, education of, 399 note 

West Lancashire Railway Com- 
pany and temperance, 444 



Westminster, Duke of, on temper, 
ance, 451 

White Coppice, prohibition in, 441 

Whortleberries used in colouring 
wine, 55 

Will, clever disguises assumed by 
the alcoholized, 164; difference 
between intention and, 160 ; 
effect of alcohol on, 160 ; in 
general life, 165; in political 
life, 164 ; in the relations be- 
tween master and man, 164 ; 
instance of power of drink to 
annihilate, 160 ; negative loss 
of, 165 ; positive loss of, 166 

Wine, ancient traditions, 6-12; 
commencement of drinking, in 
England, 309 ; milk of Venus, 11 ; 
use of, in Lord's Supper, 423 

Wines, adulterations of, port, 48, 
Ehine, 48, sherry, 49 ; fortified 
for export, 51, 52 ; fortified by 
potato spirit in London docks, 
52 ; ills caused by drinking adul- 
terated, 54 ; Lancet on nutritious 
elements in, 76 ; mallow-bloom, 
whortleberries, elderberries, co- 
chineal, and logwood used in 
colouring, 55 ; reasons for adul- 
tei'ation of, 47 ; rectification with 
prepared chalk, 53 ; Spanish, 
manufactured from raw German 
spirits, 52 ; Daily Telegraph on, 
52 

Wisconsin Central] Eailway and 
temperance, 445 

Women and alcohol, 358-367 

Work, capacity for, reduced by 
alcohol, 123 

Worth, human, foundation of, 167 



Yeast fungi, generation of, 40 



FKlNlEi; BY AVILLIAM CLOWES AND SONii. LUNUIED, LUiNDON AND BEtCLEb. 



:-.v: 












\ry 






V;,im 









T „- ---f. , 










f-'K »J>-',i **:- 




